The Joy of Battle: Historical Espionage Action
by CobraShipper
Summary: Against the backdrop of World War II, the Cobra Unit unravels a web of intrigue and espionage among the Philosophers. Will the Joy and her unit choose loyalty to their countries... or to themselves? Rated for DSLV - please R&R,  still editing
1. A Joyful Scene

Chapter 1: A Joyful Scene

* * *

Joy gripped the sides of the sink until her knuckles were almost as white as the ceramic surface. The rusted drain and streaks of iron stains swirled and rippled. She shut her eyes to fight back the nausea.

Sorrow snored rhythmically in the other room. Normally the sound would be somewhat comforting, but in her early morning confusion, it was like a saw across her brain, tearing backward, forward, backward, forward…

She opened her eyes, and the whole room swayed in time with the snores. She pitched forward and pressed her forehead against the cold mirror.

* * *

Three months earlier, in early August 1943, Joy had been standing in the lobby of a very different hotel in Borehamwood, England.

"Madam, those trousers just won't work for a lady agent."

She turned to the voice and saw a squat gentleman with a trim silver mustache and a bellman's uniform. He had appeared suddenly and silently in the entrance to one of the corridors. Although she wanted to dislike him immediately, something about the smile forming at the corners of his mouth charmed her.

She extended her hand for a handshake.

"Again, unbefitting of a lady," he chuckled, "but I guess I shouldn't have expected anything different from _his_ daughter."

"You know my father?" she asked.

"Know him? I introduced him to your mother! I had to get special permission from the commander to be the one to greet you when you arrived here."

He reached for her bag, but she pulled it away.

"I can carry it myself, thank you," she snapped, "and I'm not staying anyway."

The bellman whistled a long note between his teeth and then said, "Follow me, then. I'll take you to the commander."

He performed a swift little turn, almost too graceful for a man of his size. His burgundy uniform flashed past her into the dark corridor, and she was startled by a faint memory.

_Standing on the piano bench in the parlor. Her father and mother together. Her father's brown eyes smiling. Guests in gowns and coats. A dark-haired man with a white-tipped wand in a burgundy frock coat. He waved the wand and coaxed a dove out of the top hat he'd set on her head. She was in a white dress, and her curls fell past her shoulders. And she was laughing with unbridled joy…_

"You say you knew my parents…"

"I did. Taught your mother German when she was a bit younger than you. Met your father in the Patriotic War. He seemed a bit lonely after the fighting was all over, so I sent him home with my best student. Ah, here we are."

He stopped in front of a heavy wooden door. It was charmingly Tudor, crossed with heavy beams with a brass knocker in the shape of a horse's head in the middle.

The man knocked, and a harassed-sounding voice from inside answered, "Come in!"

Joy and the bellman stepped into the room. The décor was rustic, but it had obviously been an expensive room when the place was a hotel. Now it was an office. A big, rough-hewn desk dominated the opposite wall. Joy grabbed the nearest chair to sit down.

"DON'T!" shouted a stick of a man in the same high-pitched voice they'd heard from the hallway. He ran toward her and snatched the chair from her hands.

"_Don't sit in that!_" He turned to the bellman.

"Why didn't you warn her, Astrus?" he hissed.

"What's wrong with the chair?" Joy asked.

Astrus opened his mouth to speak, but the other man interrupted.

"It'll blow up! That's what's wrong with it!"

"That's incredibly irresponsible, leaving it out like that! Of course, all I've seen since this war began is grown men being irresponsible. I've half a –"

"Joy…," muttered Astrus. "This is the commander."

"Oh," she cried, unable to hide a slight blush, which both men noticed softened her features considerably.

She held out a hand to him. He took it weakly.

"We're glad to have you working with SOE, Commander…"

"Joy," she offered.

"Joy, yes. Joy of the Cobra Unit. Glad, very glad," he said in a voice that didn't sound at all glad. "I'm Lieutenant Jonathan Thomas, and this is Major Mark Astrus. He invented the exploding chair."

"Among other things," Astrus said.

"Yes. Among other things…. Well, Miss Joy, you're here for a mission briefing. Shall we get started?"

* * *

A distant explosion shook the mirror. Joy moaned and held tight to the sink as the sconces flickered behind their rotting silk covers. The RAF was bombing Berlin again tonight. She kept no secrets from her commanders, but they never told her when they were going to bomb.

The snores from the bedroom stopped with a gasp and some low muttering in Russian.

"Misha, is that you?" she cried weakly. Her exhaustion had begun to overcome her nausea.

She pushed herself back from the sink and into the doorway, where she leaned against the frame.

The Russian continued. She had been learning the language, but the words she heard now, while she knew them as Russian, were spoken with such fervency that they ran together.

"Misha!" she shouted again. "Wake up!"

Sorrow's eyes widened in the darkness for a moment, and he stopped speaking. He smacked himself in the forehead with his palm.

"God. God. GOD! Joy, I asked you _please_ not to call me that!"

The sight of Sorrow sitting up in the hotel bed, his messy blond hair silver in the moonlight and his forehead resting in his hand, was so pitiful that Joy almost laughed.

* * *

"Why do you laugh at the pain of others?" he had asked her shortly after they first met, at a Nazi research facility in Poland.

It was 1942, and although they were not yet calling themselves the Cobra Unit, Joy's unit was already taking on rescue and sabotage missions. Most of them were young – everyone but The End was under 30. Joy was barely 20 and already a formidable commander.

Special Operations Team Zero, as they were known in the early days of the war, had come to Poland to drug and kidnap a Nazi chemical warfare researcher for the Americans.

Finding the Sorrow was entirely accidental.

He was an orphan from Velitsky, a farming community on the lower Volga River. The famine of 1933 wiped the tiny town from the Soviet Union map. The few survivors, mostly children, fled into the forests and to nearby towns. The Sorrow and his older sister Marina made it to an orphanage in the city of Saratov.

He was a strange child with bulging blue eyes and hair like spun moonlight. He learned when he was very young that the other children could not hear the voices of their dead relatives. In Velitsky, his family had supplemented their farming income with his abilities. Usually it was simple questions – "Whom did Old Ivan want to inherit the cattle herds?" As the 1930s began, the wives and mothers of Velitsky were asking him to reach across space to find out if their husbands and sons in the work camps and gulags were still alive.

It was exhausting, and he was a sickly child. He rarely worked in the fields, and his eyesight was too poor for hunting. His ability, he felt, was the only contribution he could make to his family.

Spirits attached themselves to him, begging him to find their loved ones with one last message. His control over the voices was tenuous at best. The other children in Velitsky were wary of him. The other children at the orphanage were terrified of him.

When the Nazis came on a gray day in 1935, not even Marina was there to protect him. She had gone to live in a community apartment for textile workers, with the promise that she would return for him once she had the means. He was left standing in the rain with men who did not speak Russian while they waited for a train to Poland.

"I don't take pleasure in other people's pain!" Joy shouted in German, still grinning.

"You were laughing at me back there!" Sorrow cried. "When I was in the dark room! Was I amusing?"

Joy frowned. "I suppose not. What were they doing to you?"

"Experiment. They say I have a unique ability which may win the war. I am always so tired from their experiments, but I wish the killing to stop."  
"I'm not sure they wish the same thing. Mind if I ask what your unique ability is?"

His eyes widened in his pale face. Joy realized that he had been squinting to look at her.

"I can… talk to the spirits of the dead. It's not a good thing. It's very… sad."

"The Sorrow…," Joy murmured in English.

* * *

Historical Notes:

This refers to the Thatched Barn, a hotel in Borehamwood, England that was used by the SOE during World War II as a research facility for explosives and camouflage as well as a stopping point for agents on their way to France. The hotel was later used as the set for The Prisoner.

Saratov is a city on the Volga River in Russia that has historically had a large German population.


	2. Schadenfreude

Chapter 2: Schadenfreude

* * *

Joy sat on the bed beside Sorrow. He squinted at her in the darkness, and she handed him his glasses.

"Aren't you used to this by now?" she asked, stroking the long hairs at the nape of his neck.

"It is not something one gets used to. I can control it better now, but sometimes, the intensity…"

* * *

Outside the Thatched Barn in Borehamwood, the rest of the Cobra Unit was waiting for the Joy to complete her mission briefing.

"She's taking too long in there," grumbled the Fury, jumping off the back of the truck and tossing his half-burned cigarette into the grass.

The Pain, who was sitting in the grass, stamped it out with his hand.

The End stretched out on the hay in the truck and yawned. "I don't know what you're talking about. I could sit here all day."

"You would," said the Fury. He punched the wooden side of the truck. "But I can't –"

An explosion in the woods interrupted him. A smile spread instantly across his face.

"Ah, hell," he said, his eyes reflecting invisible flames, "doesn't that sound like fun?"

"Yessss….," hissed a voice behind the truck. "Looked fun too."

"Fear!" the Fury cried. "I thought you were in the cab with the Sorrow."

The Fear, tall and thin with pointed features down to the steep widow's peak in his black hair, stepped around the truck.

"Yeah, well, Sorrow was reading or something, so I thought I'd take a little look around."

"So you've come back to gloat about it," growled the Fury.

"Actually, I've come back to get you guys."

"Joy won't like that," said the Pain, "but you can count me in."

"Hell, I was moaning about it, so I guess I _have_ to go," growled the Fury.

"I'll just stay here and rest a bit," said the End from his hay bale.

"That leaves… Sorrow, you in?" the Fury shouted, stomping over to the passenger door.

He opened it. "Sorrow?"

An English copy of Machiavelli's _The Prince_ lay neatly on the seat.

"I swear he was reading it when I left…," said the Fear, shrinking away from the Fury, whose eyelids were twitching.

The Pain walked between them and picked up the Sorrow's book.

"Can't you see that this gives us the perfect excuse to wander around? We just tell the End that we had to go find Sorrow, and when Joy gets back, we'll be her heroes," he said.

"Effing brilliant!" said the Fury.

* * *

"Stupid. Stupid!" the Joy shouted, marching back and forth in front of her unit. "All of you! The End!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Why did you let them go?"  
"I was –"

"Pain!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Was it really your idea?"

"Well, that's a –"

"Fear!"

"Yes'm!"

"You little SHIT! Haven't I…"

While she bellowed, the Sorrow took the opportunity of not being the center of attention to raise his head and watch her. Her face was inches from the Fear's, and though he leaned in toward her with a slimy grin, Sorrow could see that he was terrified. His eyebrows were tightly knit, and the dark hairs on his arms stood like a trembling army. Joy's face twisted viciously, but her eyes glittered. At the end of each over-emphasized word, the vestige of a smile would begin, then disappear from her lips. She was enjoying this.

* * *

Joy took Sorrow's trembling hands. It was like reaching into the snow. The metal bed frame rattled as another blast shook the hotel.

Since Marina died, it had been harder for Sorrow to push the voices away. He was already a target for the casualties of war. Their souls knew he could hear them, and they screamed for justice.

Sorrow could almost thank the Nazis for teaching him to control his power. By the time Joy's unit found him, he could reach almost as far across time and space as he wanted, but the effort of passing billions of voices often left him unconscious for hours. The day he was rescued, he was scheduled to contact Ramesses II to find out if he had really kept Jewish slaves.

By that muggy August day outside the Thatched Barn, he only noticed the voices when he wanted to. They were a constant rumble in the background, like thunder from an eternal storm, showing him a bolt of lightning occasionally to remind him that it was still dangerous.

He was reading a paragraph in _The Prince_ on forcing reform upon his subjects when one of these bolts struck him. Sixty-one female voices screamed together, a fire in a textile factory, unrelated to the war. He was surprised to hear it among the battles and massacres of the war until he heard the voice he had been dreading since his train ride to Poland in 1935.

"Mishenka," whispered Marina's voice, but he could hear it clearly above the screams. "I know you are somewhere in Europe right now, but I hope you can hear me."

Though his eyes were open, Sorrow could see Marina kneeling in a dim place. She was badly burned down her right side, her cheek a hole covered in tattered black flesh, and her chest was partially collapsed. Her blue plastic gloves were melted into her skin. She was dead. He saw visions like this sometimes, spirits preoccupied with _how_ they had died, but seeing Marina…

"I heard that you were fighting for our country," she continued. "Please, Misha, keep fighting. I'm gone now, so don't come and find me."

Her disfigured body faded.

_Marina!_ he called silently.

"I'll pray for your happiness…." Her voice evaporated with the last glimpse of her image.

Sorrow laid the book carefully on the seat, opened the door, and ran into the woods to hide his tears.

* * *

Joy licked a grimy finger and turned a page in the notebook she had taken from one of the Nazi scientists.

"Your name's Michael, huh?"

Sorrow nodded. God, he looked pathetic, thought Joy. He kept rubbing his wrists and squinting at her as if he'd never seen a woman before.

"Cigar?" she asked.

He shook his head violently.

"Good. Didn't want to give one up anyway."

She turned another page.

"You speak German with an accent. Where are you from?"

"Russia. Velitsky – um… Saratov on the Volga."

"You're a Mikhail, then?" She pronounced it "Mih-kale".

"Actually, 'Mee-khah-eel', but the Germans could not say it, so I was called 'Michael'."

"A couple of my men are Russian, but I forget their names. You'll give up yours too when you join my unit."

"J-join?" Sorrow trembled. "But I c-cannot _fight_!"

Joy shut the notebook and tucked it into a pouch on her belt.

"Your… power will be useful to us in other ways. I still have to get permission, of course, but I can train you."

She glanced at his scrawny arms. This would take some work… but a medium! It wasn't like they were in every unit, and if she _didn't_ take him, someone else would. What if it were the Axis? The Germans would find out their lab was raided eventually. And she'd already picked out such a perfect name…

* * *

Historical Notes:

The Thatched Barn was used for explosives testing, mainly creating explosive booby traps, including exploding cigars.

"Mishenka", as well as "Misha", is a diminutive form of the Russian name "Mikhail". "Mishenka" can also mean something like "teddy bear" since "Misha" is a nickname for bears in Russia. As a little side note, there is an unsubstantiated (at least in English) rumor that Hideo Kojima, creator of the MGS games, announced in an interview that The Sorrow's real name is "Michael". I created an explanation for his non-Russian name in the story. And just for giggles, I'll tell you now that my husband's name is also "Mikhail". I sometimes feel like I'm writing about him. ^.^


	3. Diagnosis

Chapter 3: Diagnosis

* * *

Joy had to find a way to calm him down. The Germans could not find out that the shy young man they knew as Michael Fuerst was actually the Russian medium who disappeared when Dr. Koppel was kidnapped from Poland.

Fires from the bombing burned on the horizon, making their own mock sunrise, but Joy knew the true morning was not far off.

She sweated despite the November wind blowing through the patched crack in one of the windows. The dizziness swept through her again, and as she closed her eyes to fight it, she collapsed, asleep, into Sorrow's arms.

When she awoke, she was lying in the hotel bathtub, a blanket pulled up to her chest and a cool cloth on her forehead. The End brought his bearded face close enough to hers that she could smell the pumpernickel bread and vodka he'd had for breakfast.

Breakfast! She sat up so suddenly that the End only just escaped without a head injury. Light poured into the hotel room through the dusty windows. Was it 8:00? Ten? Noon, even? The rest of the unit stood behind the End with varying looks of concern. If the Cobras were here, then…

"Where's Major Skorzeny?" she asked.

The Fear answered, "He left early this morning. Didn't tell anyone but left you a note." He handed it to her. "With you sick, that left _him_…" – here he pointed at the Sorrow who leaned, ashen-faced and still, in the doorway – "as the highest ranking officer here. He decided that you should have the day off."

"Why did you make _him_ an officer anyway?" the Fury grumbled. "It's not like…"

"We've known him for over a year now," said the End. "Isn't it about time…"

"I'm not _sick_!" Joy shouted, but even as she said it, a jolt of pain spread from her right temple. Thoughts of malaria and malignant tumors invaded her.

"She doesn't have a fever," the End said thoughtfully.

Poison, then! She thought of the last things she had eaten. Or was it the beer? Did the major know more than she thought he did? Then again, she had been getting sick like this for several weeks now.

The End said after a moment, "It's too early to tell, but if my years of experience have taught me anything, it's something only Joy and Sorrow need to know about right now."

"Why the geek?" the Fury spat.

The Fear hissed, showing the full length of his tongue.

"You forget, Fury, that we're all a bunch of circus freaks with a bloodlust."

"You may be freaks, but I'm not."

"You can be the fire eater!"

"You shit-eating –"

Joy stood, stern and forbidding even in her pajamas. The Cobras could scarcely believe they had just been worrying about her health.

"End. Pain. You're in charge today. End, in a few minutes, you'll organize the patrols. Be sure to pick the worst snipers. Tell them they are the best. Pain, take the rest of Skorzeny's unit out on drills. Make them feel true pain. I'm tired of babysitting a bunch of cocky SS boys, so until we finish our mission, they'll have to suffer."

She glared at each one of them. A circus with a bloodlust. For once, Fear had it right… except Sorrow. Something had to be done about him. If they were going to win this war, he was going to have to do… whatever that thing he did at Gran Sasso was.

"Cobras. Even though we're in the enemy's clothes, we can't forget who we're fighting for."

"We're loyal to you, boss," Pain said.

"Good," said the Joy. "You, Fury, and Fear can go. The End and the Sorrow stay here a moment."

When the rest of the unit was gone, after several minutes of griping from the Fear and the Fury, Joy staggered into the bedroom and sat down. Sorrow approached her fearfully and then sat beside her. He was surprised when she took his hand.

The End began, "I've lived a long time and seen a lot of things…"

Joy said, "Cut the wisdom of age crap and tell me what's wrong with me."

"Exhaustion," he said simply.

"That's it?"

Sorrow was relieved. He knew exhaustion.

"That's all that's _wrong_ with you. In normal circumstances, the rest would be _right_," the End continued.

"The rest of what?"

"Sometimes I think that your brilliant military mind has made you forget that you are also a woman. May I ask you a very personal question?"

"If you want a punch in the face for an answer."

Sorrow was often taken aback by her incredible rudeness, especially to anyone trying to help her.

"Please, sir," said the Sorrow, always polite to the ancient sniper whom he admired greatly, "how does this concern me?"

"Oh, come off it, kids! Pretending to be a married couple for Skorzeny? I'm certain that wasn't originally part of the mission."

"It was my punishment…," the Sorrow began, but he stopped when he saw Joy's face.

Neither Sorrow nor the End had seen her scared before. Her skin was as white as Sorrow's, and her wild gray eyes stared blankly. Fear was not an emotion that made her beautiful or endearing. The effect was horrifying.

All three were silent for a moment.

"It can't be," the Joy said finally.

* * *

Historical Notes:

This refers to Otto Skorzeny of the German Waffen-SS. He was a decorated Nazi officer during World War II and led several special operations given to him directly by Hitler. At the time this part of the story takes place, he was the equivalent of a Major.

At this time, the word "geek" was still associated with carnival sideshows.

Gran Sasso is a mountain in Italy.


	4. Victory Follows the Money

Chapter 4: Victory Follows the Money

* * *

In August of that year, the Sorrow had been watching his commander yell at each member of her unit in turn. After the Fear came the Fury, and curses flew as he and the Joy competed for the most vulgar use of not only English but German, Russian, and something that sounded like Mandarin Chinese. Though Joy left the Fury fuming and calling her uncouth names under his breath, he never once even clenched his fist at her.

Then it was Sorrow's turn.

"Sorrow!"

"Yes, sir," he said as confidently as he could. He had learned in the past year never to call her "ma'am".

"You started this whole thing, didn't you?"

He tried to shut her out like the voices, but Joy expected an answer.

"Are you even listening to me, Sorrow?"

"Y-yes, sir."

"Sure doesn't seem like it. Look at me!"

He did. She wasn't even trying to hide her smile now. This was a battle, and he was one hell of an easy target.

"The others say you ran off. Is this true?"

"Yes."

"What?"

"Sir. Yes, sir."

"My only order was that you, _all_ of you, stay by the truck. You disobeyed that order. On the battlefield or during a mission, there's no room to disobey orders. You will compromise the mission and possibly the entire war. Am I making myself clear?"

"Yes, sir," they all answered.

"Sorrow," she said, "you are still rather new to the unit, but I need you. What you did today can't happen again. On this next mission, you are to stay by my side unless I tell you otherwise. You and I are going to pretend to be married."

* * *

While she sat in Branch Commander Jonathan Thomas's office, listening to the details of her unit's next mission, Joy was contemplating the curious file she had just received. She and the Cobra Unit were to take on disguises in Nazi Germany, various accomplished soldiers from different branches of their military, all of whom had been recommended to SS Captain Otto Skorzeny for his special assignment in Italy. Although most of the other soldiers they would join in Germany, and indeed the rest of the Cobra Unit, would not know the details of this assignment, Joy was holding a full briefing in her hands as Thomas spoke. For being such a small organization, SOE had an amazing network of spies.

"These," he continued, handing her another stack of papers, "are your covers. None of these are real people, but all of them were enlisted several months ago by our contacts in preparation for a mission of this sort. They come complete with accomplishments, ranks, full life stories. Assign these to your unit as you see fit. Memorize them, and destroy them before you leave England. You will receive your papers in France."

Her role was obvious – a woman pilot named Frieda Fuerst. Frieda, it seemed, was married to an engineer named Michael Fuerst, who was also being sent on this assignment. Joy did not think of herself as a spy, but even she could see that this was an unusual situation, bound to raise red flags on their cover.

"I'm married, then?" she asked. "Isn't it a little… abnormal?"

Thomas said, "Our intelligence shows that Skorzeny distrusts single women. You'd do well to keep your feminine wiles in check."  
Unlike Mark Astrus, whose teasing reminded Joy a little of her father back in the States, Jonathan Thomas disgusted her. His lips were too thin, his fingers too long and pale. He ran them through his blond hair constantly, leaving pieces sticking up all over like exposed wires. Joy kept silent despite her anger. Thomas was a slight man, but behind his milky gray eyes and nervous affectations, Joy saw a deadly confidence.

She built him a back story. He looked about 35, and she imagined he had once been married. He wore glasses to read. Perhaps he had wanted to be a pilot but was turned down for his eyesight. Now he had a desk job, comfortable but far from the action of the war. A powerful friend had probably helped him get it, a friend, Thomas must have felt, who could crush a mere woman in his fist.

"… not a lady spy like you're used to…," Astrus was saying.

"Women are women," Thomas replied, lighting a cigarette. A Gitanes, a French cigarette.

"I may be out of line here, but I think this attitude is exactly the reason we've lost so many…," Astrus continued.

Joy let them argue for a moment while she examined the rest of the cover stories. She had to choose a husband for this mission, a man from her own unit. Why didn't SOE make the decision for her? Wouldn't it have been easier to send them into France with their papers?

There was already a sniper in the list of covers, so that would be the End. That left the Pain, the Fury, the Fear, or the Sorrow to play Michael. Not one of them seemed anywhere near suitable. The Pain had once remarked that he liked his coffee like he liked his women – covered in bees! – and she didn't want to find out whether he was being sarcastic. The way she and the Fury argued, one could certainly believe they were married, but they would also be Exhibit A in the case for divorce. The Fear, frankly, scared even her a bit. Though she trusted him as she trusted the rest of her unit, she wasn't sure she wanted to share a bed with that tongue. Then there was the Sorrow. It was easy enough to dismiss him as too weak – a Nazi officer would never accept a husband so submissive to his wife – but Joy had another reason, buried deep in her mind.

"Perhaps," said Astrus, "we ought to take the young commander on a tour of our facility."

* * *

It was a puzzling mission SOE had given her. As she, Thomas, and Astrus walked the grounds, she tried to make sense of it.

"This came from HQ, you say?" she asked.

Thomas sighed. "Astrus brought it up after his last visit to the London bureau. It was specifically assigned to the Cobra Unit, and we had one hell of a time tracking you down."

"With the Nazis, though?"

Astrus answered this time. "From what I heard, the orders came directly from a meeting of Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt."

"But this really isn't our sort of mission. We're soldiers and assassins. We do recon, sabotage. We're not spooks."

Astrus stopped and turned to her.

"Joy. There is no doubt in my mind that you are the one for this mission. This man, Otto Skorzeny, is a soldier too, but he's never done a snatch mission. This mission has to succeed so that Hitler will continue to choose Skorzeny for every important mission after this. Mussolini is small potatoes to us, but a daring rescue will boost Hitler's confidence, make him try some of his stranger plans, especially the ones we've been feeding him."

"My men will never be able to take on a disguise."

"They must. Their lives will depend on it. _My_ life will depend on it."

"And if we don't take it? Or if we fail?"

Thomas smiled for the first time since Joy had met him. It was a cruel smile that showed too little lip and too much tooth.

"Then that, young lady, will be the end of your little Cobra experiment… and the loss of something very precious."

"What are you threatening, Lieutenant Thomas?" Astrus asked.

This time, Joy could not control her frustration. How was it that a mere branch commander of the SOE, an organization many soldiers regarded as a joke, would consider threatening her unit, no matter how powerful the man's friends may have been?

"And how would you destroy the Cobras then, _John_?" she spat.

His smile widened, more of a leer now than a grin.

"It's not just SOE you're working with now, little girl. Your orders didn't come from the President or the Prime Minister or even from the damned Fuhrer. They came from the Philosophers."

"You –" she began.

"Joy, my dear," said Astrus kindly, "war can't be left up to Parliaments and Congresses… or even generals. Victory will follow the money if the money is used well. We funded the Cobra Unit at your father's request, but you and your men showed skill beyond anything we could have expected. I wouldn't be surprised if you went down in history as one of the greatest heroes of the century."

"Don't flatter her, Astrus," Thomas growled.

"It's not flattery. It's truth, and you'd do well to respect her."

She only had a moment to revel in his compliments before she saw the glint of a pair of glasses and white-blond hair. Then she saw the Fear and the Fury, who were merrily dragging a semi-conscious Sorrow between them.

"Excuse me," she said and took off toward the tree line.

* * *

Historical Notes:

At this point in history, Otto Skorzeny was not yet a major. I could not find an exact timeline of his ranks, but I figure he was a Hauptsturmführer, the SS equivalent to a captain.

SOE stands for Special Operations Executive, the British spy network during World War II.

At that time, spies were often referred to as "spooks", a somewhat derogatory term.


	5. The Magician

Chapter 5: The Magician

* * *

Loose strands of Joy's golden hair whipped across her face as she tightened the helmet strap under her chin. She had let her hair grow out a little over the past year and was silently regretting it.

She stood at the open door of the blacked-out Douglas C-47D waiting for her signal to jump. When it came, she didn't hesitate before launching herself into the dark sky above northern France.

After a momentary freefall, the static line attached to the plane tore open her parachute. There was little she could do to guide its course, so she drifted earthward and hoped a dark parachute against a cloudy night sky would go unnoticed.

* * *

In June of 1942, just a few months before the British and the Americans launched the invasion that would be known as Operation Torch, Joy and the rest of Special Operations Team Zero camped out in the desert brush of Algeria. The day had not gone well. They had received some bad intel on their target from a contact the Fear had made in Oran. The End's position was given away, and they had been forced to flee the city.

Only a well-timed distraction by the Joy had allowed the End to complete the assassination.

"Shit, Fear!" Fury shouted for the third time that night. "You really could have gotten us all killed."

"But he didn't," Joy said, "and that's all that matters now."

"Who's to say they aren't combing the desert for us?" he said.

"Want to split up then? Fend for yourself?"

"If you weren't telling me what to do, I'd at least light a fire."

"And alert everyone to our position? I thought you were smarter than that."

The End shivered. "I don't mean to complain, but a fire would be nice."

"I think it feels just fine," said the Pain.

"Maybe you should live in the desert then, Pain," the Fury sneered. "Bloody hot all day and ass-numbingly cold at night."

"What do you suppose would happen if they did find us?" the Fear asked in an unusually quiet voice.

Since it had gotten dark, he had sat slightly apart from everyone else, gazing at the moon rising between plateaus. His long arms were wrapped tightly around his knees. All of his confidence from the morning was gone.

"We'd be full of bullets before we could grab our weapons," said the Pain.

"No way in hell would the Vichy be that efficient," the Fury said.

"Not like that," murmured the Fear. "After that. Where do you suppose we go when we die?"

"Hell if I know!" growled the Fury.

"Hell's probably right," said the Pain.

"I hope God judges me kindly and gives me eternal rest," the End said, smiling.

"No rest for a soldier," said the Pain.

"Back before the Revolution, we used to sew a small icon of a saint into a hidden pocket in our uniform."

"Who'd you carry?"

"Francis of Assisi."

The Fury snorted. "Hardly the patron saint of war."

"Saint Francis was a good man. He fought in his early years but later lived a life of peace and charity."

"Think it's a little late to start for you, old man."

"Nothing," said the Joy flatly.

"What the hell are you talking about?" the Fury asked.

"There's nothing after we die. We're just… gone, like blowing out a candle before bed."

"Really?" asked the Fear. He edged closer to her.

"Scared, Fear?" the Fury said.

"It's really more like popping a bubble. You can relight a candle," said the Pain.

"For us it will be. When your microbomb goes 'Boom!' there'll be nothing left."

Joy watched the Fear draw his body tighter and rest his head on his knees. As confident as she was in the non-existence of the afterlife, tonight she wanted, for his sake, a world beyond.

* * *

Joy dropped her pack and unfastened her parachute from one shoulder just before she hit the ground. She gathered it quickly and sloppily. With no identification papers, she would surely be shot on sight. Marquise was over five miles away, and she would need to make it there in the next hour to keep her cover of darkness.

* * *

On the southern side of Marquise, the Sorrow was about to make his own jump. He had parachuted with the Cobra Unit a couple of times before but never at night and never so alone. He remembered his first drop, a tandem jump with the Fear. Fear had whispered horrific stories of parachuting accidents while they fell.

_What's the worst that can happen?_ he thought before he tumbled out the open door.

* * *

The Fear was jumping that night too. Parachuting was not his favorite way to start a mission, but he grinned at the SOE officer supervising the jump anyway. He'd heard from the Joy that U.S. paratroopers were shouting, "Geronimo!" as they jumped, and he wanted to try it.

"GERONIMO!" he shouted, throwing his arms wide. Then he and his grin fell backward into the night.

* * *

_It's quiet,_ thought Joy as she crept down the hill where she'd landed. No birds. Only the soft hum of distant cicadas. A rumble of thunder echoed from somewhere over the English Channel.

Trees were sparse, and the grass was short. Careful to avoid main roads, Joy moved slowly toward Marquise.

When she reached the town, her eyes had adjusted fully to the ever-darkening night. Clouds thickened overhead, blocking both stars and moon. As she approached the tiny yellow house where she was to meet her contact, Joy saw a flash of lightning in the clouds and heard a long roar of thunder like fifty bombers crossing the sky. Even the night was at war.

She knocked at the front door, and it opened almost instantly. The house was entirely dark. A hand reached invisibly from the darkness and pulled her inside. Another hand covered her mouth as something warm and wet touched her neck. Joy used her free elbow to swing into her captor's diaphragm, knocking the wind out of him. She grasped the arm covering her mouth and threw the gasping man to the ground. By the way his body fell, she could tell he had uncommonly long limbs, and hadn't she felt bristly hair on his arm when she grabbed him?

A controlled semi-circle of red lantern light swung toward her to reveal the Fear curled up like a dead spider on the floor.

"What was that you just did?" asked a gentle British voice. The speaker was hidden in the darkness beyond the lantern's light, but she recognized the voice of Mark Astrus.

"Gutter fighting," she answered. "We all know it to varying degrees. I learned it in OSS training. Not elegant fighting by any means, but it's saved my life before."

She looked down at the Fear, who was sitting up and cracking his joints.

"Just… testing you…," he said; then he dislocated one shoulder and rolled it back into place. "Ahhhh… Just making sure it was really you, boss."

Astrus reached for Fear's hand, but Joy knocked it away.

"He can get up on his own."

Astrus nodded understandingly and set his lantern on the table, arranging it carefully so that the light wouldn't reflect off the wall.

"I'm sorry for the lack of light," he said. "As I'm sure you have noticed, it is four-o-clock in the morning, and all of Marquise is supposed to be asleep. A lit window would arouse suspicion."

"So you were the one we were supposed to meet here in France. I'm surprised you didn't tell me back in England."

"Secrecy, dear Joy. If you had known whom you were meeting, you might have told someone if captured."

She was going to protest, but the Fear cut her off. "You already know each other?"

"I forgot, Fear," Joy sighed. "I met Agent Astrus back in Borehamwood. Mr. Astrus, this is the Fear, part of my Cobra Unit."

"Thank you, but we met a quarter-hour ago. He made quite the impression on me."

"Mr. Astrus, how did you get here so fast anyway?"

"Ah, Joy," he said. His eyes sparkled in the light of the electric lantern. "I have my own ways of getting in and out of the country. I'm not suited for parachuting."

With a snap of his fingers, he produced a cigarette and match from his cuff.

"Care for a smoke?"

"I only smoke cigars."

"Of course you do. Too bad. The French have the best cigarettes."

The sound of the beating rain outside suddenly got louder, and a nearby lightning strike lit the now-open doorway, where a dripping silhouette stood. The rain fell like gray sheets being thrown over a bed.

"Where can I buy six red roses?"

Joy heard Sorrow's voice asking the question each of them was supposed to ask the occupant of the house. She was sure he could see her, but he was obviously taking the mission quite seriously. She liked that.

When Astrus didn't answer right away, she answered in French, "Why don't you go outside and see if they fall from the sky?" then in German, "Now shut the damn door before the whole town sees us!"

Satisfied with the correct answer, Sorrow closed the door behind him.

"I am sorry for being late," he said, taking a seat at the table. "There is a patrol out. I heard them speaking, but they did not see me. They heard planes flying over and a shout in the sky. I am certain they are looking for us."

"They won't come in here," Astrus said with a smile.

"Why do you think that?" Sorrow asked.

As he was approaching in the rain, he had felt that there was something strange about the house. There was a sound, low in the mix of voices, like a heartbeat slightly out of rhythm. Not eager to experience Joy's wrath again, he ignored it.

"Trust me," Astrus said, clapping his chubby palms together. Sorrow saw that he wore a gold ring with a red stone on his right middle finger. The electric lantern went out, leaving the four agents in complete darkness.

There was a short sizzle, and a match flame illuminated Astrus's face for a moment before he lit his cigarette and shook the flame out.

"The gendarmaries are very superstitious. I'm sure they thought they heard a ghost in the sky," Astrus said.

He clapped his hands again, and a circle of light appeared near each. He handed one lantern to the Fear and the other to the Joy.

"An invention of mine. The light is focusable. Just turn the bottom, and you can make a full circle around you or the tiniest sliver. It also lights up white, green, or red.

"Now you'll want to go down the hall and sleep. We don't want to let anyone see that we're awake at this hour, and we have a lot to do before you leave for Germany tomorrow."

* * *

Historical Notes:

The Douglas C-47D was a common paratrooper transport aircraft used during World War II by both the Americans and British. It's blacked out because it's dropping spies at night, something the SOE did regularly.

Operation Torch was the November 1942 Allied invasion of Algeria and French Morocco. The groundwork for the invasion may have been laid by the early Special Forces units of the OSS. Operation Torch was meant to open up another front for the war before the Allies launched a full landing on Occupied Europe.

The Vichy was the French government during World War II. The French Vichy government was small and regarded as a puppet government of the Nazis. The French Vichy government had a presence in the French colony of Algeria, and the Vichy army fought the Allies during Operation Torch.

Marquise is a town in northern France

OSS stands for "Office of Strategic Services", the predecessor to the CIA. OSS also organized OGs (Operational Groups) which are called the first Special Forces of the United States. "Gutter fighting" was an early form of close-quarters combat usually credited to Lt. Col. William E. Fairbairn, who borrowed from Asian martial arts and taught OSS operatives. This is likely the basis for The Boss's CQC, combined with SOE's "silent killing", which we will learn about in the next chapter.

"Gendarmarie" is the British word for a French policeman.


	6. Ghost and Memories

Chapter 6: Ghosts and Memories

* * *

The Joy's lantern swung in front of the Sorrow, sending red light scattering across the wallpaper, turning the pastel tulips into pieces of faces – an ear here, a nose, sensuously parted lips, a full profile over there. The glimpses of faces became real faces. There was a woman with blue lips and a man with pink albino eyes; his neck sprouted from a leafy green collar.

* * *

Marina said ghost lanterns haunted the marsh. She had seen them at night, even followed one once, mesmerized by its flickering red light, until she felt her foot sink into the ground.

The nine-year-old Sorrow gasped as Marina told the story. He gripped her wrist with tiny, cold fingers.

"You wonder how I got away? Well," she said, "as I was following the lantern, all of my rational thoughts slipped away. Inside that flickering fire, a tiny woman danced. She was flat like a leaf. When she turned one way, she looked like any other woman except crimson and incredibly beautiful, but in another turn, she would become so thin she was barely there, just a dancing line.

"And slowly, as I sprinted after her down the paths through the marsh that I know so well, I heard a voice growing louder. I say that I heard it, but it wasn't really a sound. More like a vibration in my mind."

Sorrow nodded. It was a familiar sensation, and he was glad to hear someone else put it into words.

"It was a man. He sounded a lot like Papa but older. Do you think he was our grandfather?"

Sorrow nodded again. His grandfather was one of the first voices he could hear, and Sorrow heard him now shouting triumphantly, "It was me! I saved her!"

Marina continued, "The voice, whoever he was, kept saying, 'Don't follow the lanterns. Never follow the lanterns,' like a chant until I finally heard it. It took me another moment to understand it. The ghost lantern's spell broke, and I scrambled onto the path again."

"She doesn't listen like you do," his grandfather said wistfully.

"Mishenka, do you think people sometimes find hidden powers when they truly need them?" Marina asked.

Sorrow stared into her blue eyes then looked down quickly. He nodded.

Marina patted his head and smiled.

"You spend all day talking to the dead, but eventually you'll have to talk to the living."

* * *

"Sorrow?"

Joy's voice floated, disembodied, in the dark hallway.

"Wake up! I can't lose you in the land of ghosts like this when we're in the middle of enemy territory. Which we are. Right now…"

She trailed off, and Sorrow wondered what she was thinking. The dead were more apt to reveal their secrets than the living.

"I am awake. Just thinking about something," he said.

"Good. This is our room."

The room was small and bare. It looked as though Astrus had tried to brighten it a bit with a rose-patterned quilt on the little four-poster bed and white carnations on the bedside table. The flowers looked pink in the lantern light.

"Do you know why we are using red light, Sorrow?" Joy asked, tossing her outer jumpsuit on a rocking chair.

"No."

Joy unbuttoned her olive tunic as she answered, "It's so that we don't lose our night vision – oh, Sorrow, come _on_! Don't hide your eyes like that. I'm sure it's not the first time you've seen a bra."

It was.

"We can't pretend we're married if you can't even look at me in my underwear," she sighed.

He was looking now. Her muscular stomach was marked with small scars. The brassiere looked more functional than attractive, its original white dulled by sweat stains. He was surprised to see her wearing such a restricting garment.

"It's actually pretty comfortable once you get used to it."

She unlaced her boots and placed them in a corner. Then she looked up at him.

"Oh, you're dripping wet! Let me get you a blanket," she said, snatching a tiny crocheted throw from the back of the rocking chair.

As the Joy turned toward him, an ethereal woman appeared beside her. Sorrow had seen the tall, dark-haired woman around Joy before. She was an unusual spectre in that she appeared much as she probably had in life rather than in death, and she never spoke. The woman, whom Sorrow assumed was Joy's mother by her blue-gray eyes and prominent cheekbones, simply gazed at him with an expression of despair. Sorrow had mentioned her to Joy before, when she appeared suddenly during a training session eight months earlier. That was the first and last time Sorrow talked about his powers to Joy outside of a mission in the ten months he had been with the Cobras. He noticed that Joy had avoided being alone with him since that day. Why was she willing to spend the next few months with him now? It couldn't simply be a punishment.

Joy's mother stared at him with her doleful eyes as Joy wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. Then she gave a quick mischievous smile which brightened her heavy features and revealed how young she must have been when she died. Joy reached for the Sorrow's hand, and her mother reached too. Their hands became one as they touched his. Instantly, the Sorrow felt the floor fall away.

The bedroom he landed in was a sharp contrast from the one he had just left. A cream-colored wooden lamp with a pink lace shade glowed warmly on a white dresser. Hand-painted roses climbed over the white molding along the ceiling. He only had a moment to take this in before his vision was directed downward. A small girl with unruly blond curls held his hand, which was now a woman's hand.

"It really is time for bed," he heard a woman's voice say around him.

The little girl lifted her head. Joy's eyes were so blue at that age! How old was she? Three?

"Who says?" she asked.

"The man in the moon," said her mother, lifting her over her head and twirling her into a miniature brass four-poster while they both laughed.

The mother's hands tucked the white sheets around three-year-old Joy's shoulders.

"A song?" Joy asked.

"Which one?"

"A German one."

"Very well," she said softly, her English accent slipping in.

She sang: "Backe, backe kuchen,

Der bäcker hat gerufen,

Hat gerufen die ganze nacht,

Elisa–"

"Stop it, Sorrow! Stop. Now!" Joy shouted furiously.

She jerked her arm away from the Sorrow and shoved him into the bed. Without looking back, she flew across the room and into the hallway, slamming the door behind her.

How _dare_ he_?_ She had avoided him for so long because she _knew _he'd do something like this. What _had_ he done? When she had taken his hand, already abnormally cold, a chill had climbed up her arm, spread into her shoulder, shot her through the heart. She had felt like someone else, someone with a very sad story, or like two people at once, and then he was singing. His voice was soothing at first, but then she recognized the words.

Months ago, Sorrow told her that he could see a woman beside her, and she knew it was her mother. Even in death, she was craving attention, the conceited woman who had cost Joy and her father so much.

Joy slid her back down the wall until she was sitting with her knees up to her chest, very like the Fear had sat a year ago in Algeria. Then she closed her eyes, let the dark hallway absorb her, and cried.

* * *

When Joy slipped into bed beside him, the Sorrow was still awake. He could see morning on the horizon through his squinted eyes. Joy seemed to be carefully avoiding contact with his skin, no doubt afraid he would see another scene from her past. He wanted to tell her that it was unusual, that he had never done something like that before, but what _was_ usual for a medium?

The woman was gone, and Joy was lying stiffly along the other side of the bed. Sorrow decided it would be best to sleep.

As his mind put away the day's thoughts and chased away the pleading voices, he heard the heartbeat gradually crescendo.

* * *

Historical Notes:

Bras were part of a standard woman's military uniform at this time. I chose to have her wear a bra because of its functionality. Bras in the 1940s were actually quite similar to bras today (although usually with buttons instead of hooks to save on metal during the war), but the sports bra would not be invented for another 34 years.

"Backe, Backe Kuchen" is a traditional German children's song and one often taught to students learning German as a second language. My mother is German and sang it when I was little, and the song stuck with me enough for me to want to use it in my story. It's basically like "Paddy Cake", but the story has a moral (which is the section her mother is singing) basically telling the child that she doesn't get any cake because she procrastinated and didn't get the baker the ingredients he needed. I thought this was appropriate as a lesson for Joy to learn early in her life.


	7. Silent Killing

Chapter 7: Silent Killing

* * *

In the late morning, Joy wandered through the small library in the back of the house. The town was quiet. Every few minutes, a car passed in the distance, and inside the house it was completely silent.

Joy wondered where all these books had come from; many were in English. Some were French translations of American authors. Piles of books rested on mismatched end tables and rocking chairs. One spindly table with a glass top held so many books, several left open page-down, that she was amazed it hadn't been crushed to splinters under the weight.

The front door opened down the hall, and she instinctively placed a hand on her pistol before putting her head out to see who it was. Mark Astrus smiled at her from the dining room as he took off his straw hat and put it on a peg by the door. She sighed and walked down the hall to join him.

"Morning, Joy," he said merrily, bustling into the kitchen with a paper bag. She sat at the table with a French translation of Mark Twain's _The Innocents Abroad_.

Astrus returned with two small bowls of red raspberries topped with dollops of cream.

"You know French?" he asked, putting a bowl in front of her.

"I read it better than I speak it."

"_C'est le ton qui fait la musique._ French is a wonderful language. It's a lot like a woman. When you hear her speak, it's a tangle of beautiful lies, but it's only when you see her stripped of her affectations that you know she's really quite simple. Oh, dear. Perhaps that wasn't a fair comparison."

No, it wasn't fair. Joy laughed and tasted a spoonful of raspberries. They were overripe but sweet with the sugared cream. It was not often that she got such a fine breakfast.

"So you and Sorrow are leaving today," he said, patting cream out of his mustache with a cloth napkin. "Fear will stay here to wait for the other three tonight. You'll all travel in pairs by three different routes."

The dining room was a cluttered mess. The table was littered with pens, notebooks, and scraps of paper which had been hastily shoved aside to make room for eating. A glass-front cabinet was full of cracked dishes and piles of books. An assortment of smashed ceramic figurines hid here and there. A tailless dog pestered a Japanese fisherman missing both hands and his pole. The headless woman in a lilac dress who carried a bundle of poppies was a particularly morbid touch. Joy suspected the display was not accidental.

"Who lived here before you got here?" she asked, scooping another spoonful of berries and cream.

"A young man. A writer. He was an SOE contact, liked to write stories of war heroes, published a couple in the Nazi French-language papers too."

"He wrote about heroic Nazis?"

"Ach, mein mädchen, but it was only his cover. A month ago, he took off for the south to join the Resistance. He was killed within the week."

"God…"

The Sorrow closed his eyes and exhaled the breath he had been holding. He stood along one wall in the hallway, hidden from Joy and Astrus.

_That's not true,_ he thought desperately, wishing he could send a thought to one of the living. _Joy, he's lying._

He opened his eyes again and turned to his right where the Fear stood frozen against the wall. Fear opened his mouth slightly as if he were about to speak, but Sorrow put one of his cold fingers up to stop him.

_Don't speak,_ he mouthed.

This house had a lot of ghosts. Sorrow had seen them in the wallpaper the night before and heard them chattering as he awoke in the morning. These were spirits attached to the house, keeping its secrets for two centuries. There was no French Resistance fighter among them.

"Who lived here before?" he silently asked the voices of the house.

"The writer –"

"That man lies –"

"– when I died –"

"– in the back bedroom –"

"MURDER! MURDER! MURDER!"

"– and that day –"

"– under the fourth floorboard –"

"He's in the basement!"

The voices overlapped into a cacophony, many entirely preoccupied with their own lives a hundred years ago.

Sorrow grabbed Fear's arm and led him into the library.

"You sense it too," Sorrow said.

"Of course not!" Fear replied. "I'm not into that spiritualist –"

"You do. You know there is something going on. The moment I heard he was dead, I tried reaching for him. And just before we came down here, I tried talking to the dead in the house."

Fear gritted his teeth. "Dead? Here?"

"They are everywhere, Fear. Get used to it. This house simply has more than some. But this is not about the dead."

"Someone here is terrified."

"That is what I thought. He is not dead, whoever he is, so I cannot contact him."

Fear sneered and licked his lips. "You sure it's not that Astrus fella… or Joy. She seems scared to death of you."

"Go to hell, Fear," the Sorrow said, but he knew the Fear was right about the Joy.

"Ah, you're finally up," said Astrus from the doorway. Both Sorrow and Fear jerked their heads toward him. Neither had noticed him and Joy coming down the hall, and it bothered both of them. Astrus had an arm around Joy, and she was smiling as if she'd just heard a very funny joke.

"If you want to see the town," Astrus said, "I suggest you do it now. The day is fine after last night's rain."

"Will we not draw unwanted attention to ourselves?" Sorrow asked.

"You _are_ Joy's trusted Cobra Unit, aren't you? Oh, and I have your papers."

He produced them, as they were now accustomed to seeing, from thin air. Sorrow took his little blue Luftwaffe soldbuch. Michael Fuerst, engineer and gunner in a reconnaissance division. The Fear frowned at his own soldbuch.

"Did I make a mistake on yours?" Astrus asked.

"Let me see that," Joy said, taking the book. "Hmm. Fallschirmjaeger – paratroopers. Guess you'll have to pretend you like parachuting."

She tossed the book back to the Fear who caught it deftly. His frown deepened.

_She did that to him on purpose,_ Sorrow thought. Was she trying to hurt him… or help him?

"Well, boys," Astrus said, "you'd better go. Your commander and I need to chat."

As he and the Fear were ushered out the door, Sorrow looked back at the Joy. She stood behind Astrus, deep in her thoughts. He wondered again what sort of thoughts they were – of her mother, of the mission, and then wildly, very briefly, he wondered if they were of him.

* * *

"So they taught you some hand-to-hand combat in your OSS training?" Astrus said an hour later. He and Joy had transformed one of the bedrooms into a practice room. The quilts were pulled off all the beds to use as mats, and the furniture was stacked in the hall. Both Astrus and Joy wore loose pants and cotton undershirts. Despite his stature and apparent girth, Astrus had strapping arms built for hand-to-hand fighting.

"SOE, however," he continued, "believes in quickly killing your opponent and not necessarily getting a fair fight out of him first."

Joy nodded eagerly.

"And for that reason, we strike the weaker points, even if they are considered cheap shots, and we carry a knife."

He produced a rubber knife between his hands and gave it to her.

"You'll get a real one when we're finished. This is just for practice. I'm amazed you weren't equipped with a knife like this, but your intelligence agency is young."

"A rubber knife? Hard to come by in these times."

"True. Up in England, they're training with stiffened bits of rope, but I figure you're worth it. Now try to take hold of me."

The old man moved quickly and nimbly. After several tries, she finally held him from behind with the rubber knife at his throat.

"Now you have a prisoner," he said, "which is a dangerous liability on a mission."

Before he finished his sentence, he had taken her arm, forced the knife against her kidney, and flung her onto the floor.

As she gasped, he said, "You can't hesitate in killing, even if you think someone is under your control. I know you are a great strategist, a great soldier, and I respect you highly, but you cannot let empathy take over. Fairness does not matter."

Joy stood again and brushed back her hair. He had beaten her so easily. In a real fight, she would have been dead. She had killed men – with a rifle, grenades, her pistol, even poison, but she had learned hand-to-hand combat as defense, a means to incapacitate a person. If they died in the process, it meant less enemies to fight another day.

She beamed at Astrus.

"Show me what my knife is for," she said.

* * *

Historical Notes:

A soldbuch, or "pay book" was a small book given to an enlisted German soldier to replace his personal ID while he was in the military. It was not actually a book to keep track of pay but instead was a document that allowed one to pay for things.

During World War II, when rubber was scarce, the SOE trainees practiced with pieces of rope instead of wooden or rubber knives. Wood was considered too dangerous.


	8. Paradox

Chapter 8: Paradox

* * *

"Are you sure we should have left her alone with him?" the Sorrow asked as he and the Fear walked down Marquise's main street.

"Do you think we had a choice? He practically shoved us out."

"I do not trust this Astrus."

"You said that before, but Joy is our commanding officer, and she seems to trust him."

"But he was lying."

"People lie about all sorts of things. The End lied about his age when he first joined the Cobra Unit."

"Why?"

"Didn't want to be told he was too old. No one believed me. Fury finally figured it out when he talked about knowing Tsar Alexander II… but Joy didn't care. She said she knew all along."

Sorrow was quiet for a moment. They passed a German soldier walking with a young woman. They spoke French together, in their own world. Once they were far away, Sorrow said, "I think this is quite a different situation."

Fear had taken out his identification and was staring at it again.

"And do _you_ want to be the one to tell her she's wrong?" he asked.

Sorrow shook his head. Fear was flipping through the pages of his soldbuch, his thin lips pursed. It wasn't just the idea of being a paratrooper, Sorrow could tell. There was something deeper.

* * *

Hair stuck to Joy's skin, getting in her mouth and covering her eyes. She tore at it, but sweat pulled it back across her face.

"Where's the real knife?" she asked.

"You can't mean to cut your hair with it!" Astrus cried.

"Of course I mean to."

"I would really recommend you keep it long."

"I honestly don't need fashion advice."

"It's not fashion advice. It's disguise advice. You may be playing a Luftwaffe pilot, but you are also playing a lady. You will need to look like one, at least a little."

When he said that, he reminded her horribly of Jonathan Thomas, and she wanted to punch him for one terrible second. Instead, she went to the fireplace where their jumpsuits were piled to be burned that night. She tore a long strip of dark blue-green fabric from one, folded it in half, and tied it around her head to hold back her hair.

* * *

"She is a –" the Sorrow began.

"Yeah. We all think she's beautiful," the Fear interrupted.

"But I would never –"

"None of us would."

"Because she –"

"Deserves our respect. Hell, she _scares_ me."

"But she picked me to –"

Fear spun in front of him and put a hand out to stop him. He flicked his tongue in Sorrow's face. Sorrow blinked but did not recoil.

"Don't get me wrong. We're all jealous, but we're also relieved. She's a piece of work, not a sensitive bone in her body. She treats us well, but she treats us like men, like soldiers. We are her sons, not her admirers. There's no point in seeing this as anything more than part of the mission."

"Of course."

Not a sensitive bone in her body… and yet, Sorrow thought, she had wrapped a blanket around him when he was cold and wet.

* * *

"What's Thomas's story?" Joy asked as she repeated a single-handed blow to the abdomen of a dummy improvised of pillows.

"Liked him, did you?" Astrus chuckled.

"Very funny."

"He's just a ranking bureaucrat. His father served his country in the House of Lords. Thomas was his second son. Only the best for the oldest and youngest, but the middle child gets to push papers for SOE. I won't say he doesn't enjoy pushing people too, especially women."

"But he's not in charge there."

"Not… technically, but he may as well be. Mr. Wills leaves about everything up to him, preferring to do the hands-on stuff himself."

"What's his connection to the Philosophers?"

"Ah, that's the sticky wicket. His father and uncle were close friends with a member of the Wiseman's Committee and pushed their friend for English representation. This wasn't to be, but when the Philosophers' network wanted to set up a training school in England, the brothers were the Committee's first choice. Even before the school was opened, the two men were fighting for influence within the Philosophers. In 1939, Jonathan's uncle was murdered. Though officially no one has been charged, the Philosophers suspected Jonathan's father. They pushed him to the periphery, rather than destroying him outright, because he had three sons in positions of power throughout England."

Joy had heard this story before from her father. Two English brothers, friends of his from the war, were chosen to run a training school. While the other Philosophers believed one brother had murdered the other, her father suspected the middle son.

Joy thrust her hand into the pillow dummy so hard that it burst, sending feathers scattering in the afternoon sunlight.

* * *

"How do you –" the Sorrow asked.

"Know what you're going to say?"

Sorrow nodded. He was tired of being interrupted.

"It's easy. I don't really have any supernatural powers, except maybe this."

He dislocated both shoulders and shoved them forward so that they jutted out like a baby bird's vestigial wings. Then, with two repulsive sucking sounds, he popped them back into place.

_Unnatural but not supernatural,_ Sorrow thought with a shudder.

"I'm perceptive," the Fear said proudly. "Reading emotions comes easy to me. That's why I usually check our contacts out first. I know when they're scared of me, and I know we can trust them… most of the time."

Fear said he had no powers, but he had felt something in that house. It wasn't the Joy.

"I have been in the unit for nearly a year, and –"

"And you've never talked to any of us like this."

"Yes, this is –"

"You're shy, kind of like the Pain. To be honest, I think all the rest of them are slightly afraid of you."

"Joy, too?"

"Especially Joy."

"But not you."

Fear grinned painfully.

"You're alright, Sorrow, like a psychiatrist or a priest or something."

He put a hand on Sorrow's arm but took it away immediately.

"God, I'm hungry! Need food. Let's get a sandwich or something."

* * *

"You're losing your concentration," Astrus said, catching Joy's arm in mid-swing. "We've been practicing for two hours without a rest, and I'm not a young man anymore."

"But I need to learn."

"You learn faster than anyone I've met. What you need is practice, and I hope you find somewhere to practice on your way to Stuttgart. What you need right now is a wash, a good meal, and some new clothing."

The Luftwaffe uniform was dark, stylish, and uncomfortable. Joy couldn't remember the last time she had worn a skirt, and Astrus had made her shave her legs. The stockings were hot and made her itch in places it was impolite to scratch.

"Do you think they'll make me fly in these?" she said sarcastically, indicating her heeled shoes.

"Haven't you ever worn a dress uniform?"

"Never had occasion to."

"No, you won't have to wear them to fly, but you will have to wear them to travel. Feel like a proud Nazi aviatrix yet?"

"Ha. I can't say this is a mission I'm proud to be a part of, Major."

"Don't call me that. You embarrass me. Ah, there's one thing missing."

He set a dark blue side cap on her head at an angle. It was trimmed in silver, and a Reichsadler, the Iron Eagle perched on a swastika, decorated the front.

"Not one of these!" she cried, centering the cap on her head. "You know what they call them in the Army?"

"This is part of your uniform," he said, tilting the hat again, "and you _will_ wear it jauntily."

Joy sighed resignedly. As perplexing as this mission was, it was for her country. Joy had a gift for accepting paradoxes. She did not believe in an afterlife but asked one of her men to get information from dead soldiers. Her father had told her of corruption within the Philosophers, but she accepted their orders and trusted their intelligence. The key was to take only what the mission required. Notice and process every detail, but only catalogue those that you can do something about. She could play a Nazi, rescue a dictator, and still be loyal to her country.

Someone knocked sharply on the front door.

"I'll get that," Astrus said, and she followed him down the hall.

Her shoes already hurt, but she was getting used to the change in balance.

Sorrow and Fear entered and immediately froze. Even the Fear, who had known Joy for two years, had never seen her in a skirt, and somehow she looked even more forbidding.

* * *

A short while later, the Sorrow was dressed and ready to leave. He was on his way to the front of the house to meet Joy and Astrus when Fear dragged him into the library.

"Be careful, Sorrow," he hissed.

"I know. I am getting better at fighting."

"That's not what I mean." His yellow eyes narrowed. "Be careful with her, with the Joy."

"I think she will be –"

"Just… don't try anything. Don't hurt her, not _ever_, or the rest of us…" He clenched his fist. "The rest of us…" He loosened and leaned against a bookshelf, feigning a slimy grin.

"I _like_ you, Sorrow, but even I… for her…"

* * *

Historical Notes:

Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881, which means that The End was probably born around 1860.

The House of Lords is the upper house of the UK Parliament. Membership is via appointment, and during World War II, most of the seats were still hereditary. This means Jonathan Thomas is from a noble family. He and his family are completely fictional and not based on any real noble family.

The Luftwaffe uniform she is wearing is that of a Luftwaffe Helferin, or "helper". These were women in non-combat roles within the Luftwaffe. There were very few female pilots, so I could not find any information on their uniforms. I did, however, find a lot on Helferin uniforms, so I borrowed that look for the description.


	9. Kurt and Fritz

Chapter 9: Kurt and Fritz

* * *

Joy and Sorrow rode to the train station in a car with a silent driver. Astrus paid the man and bade them a hasty farewell – for show. He had already given them their money, tickets, and suitcases.

"And I will see you in Berlin," he had said before they left the house, "after the mission."

"How are we to make contact?" Joy had asked.

"Worry not. I will make contact with you when it's time."

The train was mostly empty, and Sorrow sat silently, staring past Joy to the rain starting to collect on the window. It was getting dark, and he wondered if the rain would stop before the others arrived in Marquise.

Joy had her cheek pressed against the window, but her eyes were open. They stared dully at the back of the seat in front.

"Joy," he said. "What is going on here? You have not told us what we are doing in Germany. These uniforms. These pa –"

"We're not talking about that," she said without taking her cheek away from the window.

For a few minutes, Sorrow watched the raindrops gather. When a drop hit the glass, it spread into several tiny drops like an airborne unit landing in a field. The little watery paratroopers ran toward each other, gathering into huddles and then separating.

Joy did not move except to lean back further in her seat. There was hardly a sound in their car. The train clacked over the tracks, and muffled conversations drifted between the seats. No heartbeat but his own.

"Who is Astrus?" he asked.

The Joy was startled from her thoughts.

"Sorrow, please," she said. She did not look at him.

"Honestly. We know nothing about this man."

"That doesn't concern you."

"It does."

Joy turned to him, eyes fierce and nostrils flared.

"I told you that it doesn't concern you. It does _not _concern you."

She turned away again and laid her head softly against the window. Sorrow had been quiet most of his life, avoiding conflict, keeping questions to himself, but he felt weak next to the Cobras. Joy told him that she needed him, but Sorrow knew it was merely his power she needed. She did not think of him as a soldier. Joy treated him differently, always protecting him, keeping him off the battlefield. He remembered the night before, her rough hands wrapping a blanket around his shoulders. It wasn't that he was special compared to the others. She must think of him as fragile, like a child she had to carry on her hip.

He watched her face in profile, her blue-gray eyes staring at the dark shapes flashing past outside the train. If he did not assert himself now, while they were alone, he might not get a chance to tell her about Astrus.

_What's the worst that can happen?_ he thought again as he had the night before during the jump. Death was preferable to losing the respect of his commander… but did she even respect him now?

"Sir," he began, but he stopped.

"What do you need?" Joy asked, obviously perturbed.

He decided, against all good judgment, that the best way to get her attention was the subject she hated most.

"That woman…," he began again.

"My mother," she said.

"Is she?" the Sorrow asked in surprise, not at the fact that the woman was Joy's mother but at the fact that Joy had answered.

Joy smiled at him.

"You weren't expecting me to be willing to talk about it," she said.

He shook his head.

"Well I didn't expect you to do that mind thing last night, so we're even now."

Her voice was low and reedy like an oboe, and Sorrow wanted to keep her talking.

"Tell me about her," he said.

"That's enough about my mother. She was a vain and self-centered woman. If she heard us talking about her now, she would be pretty pleased with herself."

A door opened and closed behind them.

"It's a sundries cart," Sorrow said.

"We're newlyweds on our way back to the front," she whispered. "It's time we act the part."

She took his hand lightly in hers, and when the woman rolled the cart by, Joy looked up at her with an innocent smile.

"Cigarettes, liquor, snacks?" the woman asked politely, her eyes taking in their uniforms.

Joy continued to smile at the woman but did not speak. She nudged Sorrow as stealthily as she could.

"N-no. No thanks," Sorrow stammered.

The woman moved on, and Joy fell back in her seat, laughing silently.

She straightened her hat which had fallen over one eye and said, "I have a lot to learn about being a woman, and you have a lot to learn about being a man."

* * *

The Fear and the Fury left on a midnight train that night. Theirs was a military vacation train packed tightly with soldiers already. As the two men shoved into a car, the other soldiers squeezed closer together to let the Fury in his Gestapo uniform and his bizarre-looking companion pass down the aisle. Two soldiers stood briskly to offer their seats. Fury moved to sit, but Fear stayed where he was.

"It's fine, gentlemen. Keep your seats," he said.

The soldiers looked at the Fury who paused for a moment before saying, "What he said. Keep your seats."

He and the Fear edged to the back of the car.

"Hell, Fear… er… Fredrich," Fury said. "I'm a goddamned Gestapo. They'll do whatever I say. We should be taking advantage of that."

"They were just soldiers…"

"'Just soldiers'? They'll remember me for sure now. A Gestapo who takes a seat is just a Gestapo. It's what they expect. This isn't normal, and they will remember."

The two Cobras were quiet for a while as they watched the other standing soldiers struggle to hold on when the train bounced. At the next station, a few men left, and everyone shifted forward. A young woman with light brown hair pushed through, using her round white suitcase as a shield. She was not in uniform. Instead, she wore a conservative dress the color of robin's eggs and tiny gold spectacles on a beaded chain that were now sliding down her nose. Fear assumed she was not much older than the Joy, and she seemed to be traveling alone. A soldier got up to give her his seat as the SS men had done for Fury and Fear. She gave the brawny blond soldier a shy smile and nod before sitting.

"You think that seat was free, lady?" the soldier growled, leaning over her.

"You did offer it to me," she answered boldly. Her voice was quiet and lilting, but it cut through the noisy car.

"Oooh, talking back to an officer!"

A few other men laughed, but most turned their backs, afraid to get involved.

"Hey, fräulein, all I want is a kiss. I've got a wife at home, and she's damned prettier than you."

The woman ignored him and glanced around the car. The boorish officer lifted her skirt a few inches while she was looking away.

"Check out the gams on that doll!" the Fury whispered.

The Fear nodded without listening. The woman swatted the officer's hand away, and as she did, she caught the Fury's eye. Then she smiled and waved as if she knew him. The officer turned and, seeing the Fury's uniform, moved aside for the woman. She ran to the Fury and threw her arms around him.

"You smell like cigarettes," she whispered. "What's your name?"

"Konrad," he answered.

"Oh, Kurt!" she cried, burying her face in his shoulder. The Fury settled into his role and patted her head, showing more sensitivity than he probably had in his entire life.

"I'm glad to see you again," he said.

"Oh, mother will be so pleased when I tell her that her only son is safe!" she cried, and then she added in a whisper, "So don't try _anything_."

Once the soldiers lost interest in the woman they thought was a Gestapo officer's sister, she, the Fear, and the Fury sat cross-legged in the aisle. They talked about the rain and the heat and the places Fear and Fury supposedly visited while on leave. At the next station, she asked where they were headed.

"Saint-Quentin," answered Fury.

"I am too!" she cried, giving him a quick hug. "My name is Sabine," she added in a whisper.

She fell asleep on his shoulder a short time later.

"She's a treat, isn't she?" Fury asked.

The Fear shrugged.

"I always knew you only had eyes for the boss," Fury muttered as he laid his head back and closed his eyes.

* * *

In Saint-Quentin, Sabine took the Fury's hand as they left the train. They looked just similar enough to pass as siblings. Fury's hair was the same light brown, like dead grass. Her face was rounder than his, but they both had molasses-colored eyes.

Sabine led him away from the throng, and Fear followed. Once they were far down the platform from the soldiers entering and exiting the trains, her face became serious, and she looked Fury directly in the eyes.

"Thank you for your kindness," she said, and when she let his hand go, she left a small wad of bills. Fury opened his hand to look at them, but she closed it gently with her own.

"You aren't really Gestapo," she said; then she looked at the Fear. "And you aren't really Luftwaffe. I doubt you're German at all."

"What the hell would make you think that?" Fury asked, kinder than usual.

"You are very bad spies," she laughed.

The Fear's eyes widened, and the Fury's eyes narrowed.

"Oh give it up, boys! Kurt, you're much too sweet."

"The hell I am!"

"You are. And Fritz here," she said, pointing at the Fear, "is never going to pass. When does your train leave?"

She pushed her glasses up her nose.

The Fury started to answer, but the Fear grabbed his arm.

"Excuse us for a moment," the Fear said.

"Of course," Sabine said in perfect English.

When they were just out of earshot, Fury snapped, "Way to be subtle, _Fritz_."

"You're the one who helped her."

"I couldn't just let a beautiful woman… Hey! She _forced_ herself on me. That bitch!"

"Calm down, Fury."

"You don't tell me to sodding calm down, you filthy g –"

"Let's just… stop drawing as much attention to ourselves. We were so obvious that this woman caught on. How many people could be watching us right now?"

"Think she's a spy, then?"

"I'm certain. Probably SOE. She has a lot of confidence and an amount of –"

"And legs. Wonder why she covers them," the Fury said, watching her several yards away bouncing on the balls of her feet. She was watching the trains.

"I know your interest in her, but what's her interest in us?"

"I say we trust her. She's already onto us, and if she is SOE, she may need our help."

"I honestly don't think she needs anyone's help," Fear muttered, but the Fury had already wandered back to Sabine.

"Is the Gentleman's Club meeting over?" she asked with a winning smile.

"We're going to have to catch our train," said Fear, brushing past her and grabbing for Fury's wrist.

"You're not staying in Saint-Quentin?" she asked slyly. "As a matter of fact, I'm not either. I'm going on to Krakow."

"Stuttgart," said the Fury.

Fear hissed at him, his tongue vibrating hideously.

"Dear GOD!" Sabine gasped, raising a hand to her mouth as if she were about to vomit. "We really are going to have to do something about you before someone gets suspicious!"  
"Why would we listen to what some woman we just met has to say?" Fear asked. He heard the announcement that their train was ready to board. They had to hurry and get away from this woman.

"Because you two won't make it far without me."

* * *

Historical Notes:

For story purposes, I've chosen the Hollywood version of Gestapo. The iconic black uniforms were worn pre-1940 and hardly ever in public places like trains. I chose this version simply because we're pretty familiar with the "Show me your papers" Gestapo stereotype, and it gave me a chance to do some stuff with the story I couldn't if he wore a simple SS gray or green uniform. Please excuse my various historical inaccuracies.

Kurt is a German nickname for Konrad. Fritz is a nickname for Fredrich and its many variations.

Saint-Quentin is a town in France. Krakow is in Poland. Stuttgart is in Germany.


	10. Loyalties

Chapter 10: Loyalties

* * *

Joy and Sorrow crossed into Germany on the twenty-eighth of August. Late that evening, the pair stood on the platform in Kaiserslautern, holding hands and examining their travel papers.

"This is odd," Joy said, squinting at the train tickets. "Well, this whole trip has been odd, but this especially."

"What?" asked Sorrow.

"From here to Mannheim, we've been booked for a private compartment. This is a war zone. The rail lines have been broken and rebuilt several times already, and yet we end up on nearly empty trains and even our own compartment."

"We are being used as a civilian cover," Sorrow offered.

"Of course we are, but for what? Wouldn't you think the Allies would want to bomb a train carrying something or someone important? They wouldn't put us on a train they were planning to bomb."

"Are you certain?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"I had something that I tried to tell you on the first train from Marquise, and there has not been another opportunity."

Joy sighed. "What was it?"

"At the house in Marquise, I felt something. Major Astrus was lying to you about the person in the house before him."

"I thought you only knew about the dead. I didn't know you could detect lies too."

"I cannot. Remember that he said the young man was dead. He was not."

"There are some people you cannot reach, right?"

"Maybe…"

"It's as simple as that."

"But the dead in the house…" had not told him anything. Perhaps his suspicion was unfounded. He had not tried too hard to contact the young man, and he often needed to touch an object valuable to a person in order to reach him. The house may have been insignificant to this writer.

The Sorrow was quiet until the train boarded. As they approached the car where two rail Gestapo checked papers, a petite old woman with cropped hair ran to them.

"Please, young soldiers!" she cried. "I watched you a long while on the platform. Are you to be married?"

"We are. We were just married in France and are now headed to Italy," Joy answered graciously. Sorrow imagined the words dripping with honey.

The woman sniffed loudly then said with tear-filled eyes, "Oh, that's beautiful! You're beautiful. You are truly the future of Germany. I had a son in the army. These are for him."

She plucked a white Madonna lily from the bundle she carried, handed it to Joy, and went on: "I'm waiting for his body."

Joy surprised the woman with an embrace and thanked her sweetly before she and Sorrow stepped into the line to board the train.

As they entered the car, Sorrow suddenly clutched his head as if he had hit it on something. He moaned and staggered into a woman ahead of them.

Joy caught him by the waist.

"He okay?" asked one of the Gestapo.

"He drank too much earlier," Joy answered. "Not used to it."

She resisted the urge to throw him over her shoulder and carry him to their compartment.

"Dear, dear Michael," she cooed, guiding him down the narrow passage, "what did I tell you about gin? A lot more alcohol than beer."

They reached their compartment without further incident, and Joy dumped both Sorrow and their luggage inside. He sat on the bed and did indeed look quite drunk.

"What is wrong with you?" she asked, fighting her anger.

He bashed his fist against his forehead several times before he answered, "There are some dead on this train. _Children,_ Joy."

"We've seen death everywhere, but you have never reacted like this."

"The voices are becoming more intense, harder to separate."

"Harder to escape, huh?"

"Yes," he said quietly. "Joy, there are terrible things in this war that they do not want you to know. The Nazis are killing –"

"Jewish people. I know."

The Sorrow's face flushed in anger.

"You and Fear are always interrupting me!"

Joy did not often apologize, but Sorrow's face held the look of devastation a child has when he has lost his favorite pet, where one cannot help but apologize for something she did not cause.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Many people are dying, more than you can imagine."

"I've heard some of the intelligence reports…"

"Stuff your intelligence! These are not numbers. These are people with voices that echo long after they are dead. If I had the strength, I would leave the Cobra Unit and… I would stop it!"

The Joy was silent. She imagined what thousands of voices would sound like screaming day and night. _You're empathizing,_ her rational side reminded her, echoing Astrus's words.

"They are on this train," Sorrow said.

"Ghosts?"

"And living too. They are in a dark place. The dead have died on the train, on a journey from up north."

"Sorrow," she said, sitting next to him and taking his hand. "We can't do anything about it but end this war."

"And you think the Philosophers will do that?"

"I know it. My father is one of them. Please, Sorrow. We cannot do anything that may compromise the mission."

* * *

The Pain and the End had nothing but bad luck after their first train out of Marquise. The rain had cleared by the time Astrus sent them off. Fury, Fear, Joy, and Sorrow had all left Marquise before Pain and the End arrived. The End did not trust the old magician. He had answered their password question with ease, and he seemed genial enough. The Pain asked the End what was untrustworthy about Astrus.

"I have met many magicians in my life, and they are always hiding something. It's their job, you see. A hundred to one says he's a Philosopher," the End said as they sat on that crowded first train.

"So what does that mean? We work for the Philosophers," Pain replied.

"Think about this, Pain," the End began.

"You're supposed to call me 'Bruno'."

"I don't like that name. Pain sounds more like you."

"Stubborn."

"Give an old man his right to be stubborn."

Pain smiled, stretching the scars on his face into new and horrible shapes. At 23, he was the youngest member of the Cobra Unit except Joy. His face and demeanor didn't reflect his youth.

* * *

In 1941, the Pain was training at STS 103, known to its students as Camp X. The facility on Lake Ontario was a joint U.S.-British-Canadian project to train agents for OSS and SOE, and his father had sent him down from northern British Columbia to train there.

Pain's mother had died in a cabin fire when he was 11, the same fire that had left his face scarred and unable to feel pain. He made an ideal beekeeper in his teens because most of his body was numb. He still regretted not taking some of the bees to Camp X. His father may have enjoyed the extra income that came from selling honey, but he did not have Pain's dedication.

At Camp X, he met a woman, a beautiful young woman who kept her hair too short and laughed during combat training. He had heard that she was the daughter of one of the facility's major benefactors and immediately disliked her for treating military training like a diversion.

One day in the middle of July, when the sun was high and scorching, he met this young woman during a training exercise. Joy, as she was called at Camp X, was put in charge of their team. As the team members were gathering at their designated meeting place, Joy took Pain aside.

"I'm Joy," she said, grinning broadly. She put her hand out to shake.

Pain took it.

"Call me 'The Pain'," he said.

"Oh good!" she said immediately. "I knew some people called you that, and I was afraid it might be derogatory. I wanted to make sure."

Before the exercise, she had researched their strengths by asking friends and instructors, and she assigned them accordingly. If she were a man, he thought, she would be leading an Operational Group into Poland before the end of the year.

Their team was split into three groups. She assigned his to commandeer a rowboat from the boathouse, without being spotted, and take it safely to the beach where another group would be waiting.

"It says in her notes that the instructor for the morning boating class likes Lucky Strikes. I think she means for at least one of us to distract him with a smoke break before class," Pain said a while later when it was just him and two other men poring over maps of Camp X and the Ontario shoreline.

"You're going to listen to the dame?" one of the men, who went by Andrews, asked.

"Lose your balls when you lost your face?" asked the other, a burly man everyone called "Bullseye".

Pain was an even-tempered young man, and he knew his teammates well. They were not men he spent time with regularly. Indeed, he generally found himself alone unless he was paired with someone for an exercise. They were part of a certain posse at Camp X that made itself heard. Andrews, Bullseye, and twelve other men rubbed elbows with an instructor named Coldman. Apparently, as all of them announced loudly to anyone who listened, Coldman hand-picked each of them as his protégés.

Coldman himself was a thin, swarthy man of no great attractiveness, but he possessed a shrewdness that made him overwhelmingly charismatic. Those he chose to take under his wing were known to be clever and cruel, the sort who calculated every movement and had a similar philosophy to Mussolini that the end justified the means.

"I think it's obvious that we should pretend we're part of the class, wait until everyone is heading to the water, and then split with the boat," Andrews said.

It took two hours to get the boat. Pain suspected that the instructor knew they were not supposed to be there. Finding an opportune moment to escape took longer than expected, but they finally made it to the secluded place at the edge of the water where the second part of their team waited. Pain's teammates congratulated themselves on their success as the boat pushed away from the shore.

"There's someone down at the water," Pain heard a voice only a few yards away say.

Two instructors were stopped on a path just a short distance from the lake. They must have heard the team's noise. They were not looking at Pain, who was standing apart from the other two, and his teammates were blocked from their view by some bushes. Pain glanced at his black armband. If the instructors saw the colored band that identified the team members, Joy's team would fail. Pain needed a distraction.

A hornet's nest clung to a branch several feet above the instructors. Pain picked up a fist-sized rock. There was no way he could hit the nest from where he was. The bushes between him and the nest were thorny raspberries. He crouched and crawled into the bushes.

Thorns tore at his clothes, shredding the knitted balaclava he wore to cover his mangled face. He pushed through the bushes until his arms were crossed with bloody scratches. Some of them hurt. Pain stood silently and aimed a throw at the nest. His teammates were still talking on the beach and did not hear the instructors hacking at the bushes to see who was down by the water. The first thing Andrews and Bullseye noticed were voices in the forest shouting about a hornet swarm and the heavy footfalls of two men running away.

"Hasn't Joy said that the Philosophers are American, Russian, and Chinese?" the End asked.

"Probably...," Pain replied.

"She has. I'm old, but I'm not senile. Astrus is English."

"The boss trusts him. If she didn't, she would have warned us. She would have figured out long ago."

"Loyal as a dog."

"As long as I'm _her _dog."

"Why do you follow her so blindly?"

"She's my oldest friend, the first person who didn't judge me by my face."

_And she didn't judge me by my age,_ the End thought. He shook his head.

"I have lived a long, complicated life, and if there is one thing I know for certain, it's that loyalties change…."

Then the train pulled into the first station, and their bad luck began.

* * *

Historical Notes:

Camp X was actually established in December 1941, but for the purposes of this story, since the Cobra Unit was already involved in World War II at that time, I have pushed it back. Even today, at the Camp X site, they fly the flags of America, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

Operational Groups, or OGs, were basically the Special Forces units of the OSS. The Cobra Unit works similarly to one.


	11. Prisoners

Chapter 11: Prisoners

* * *

At the next station, Fear and Fury followed Sabine off the platform and into the small town. They had several hours until their train would arrive, and the Fear had let everyone know he had been starving for the last hour.

"No more apples. Get me some _meat_!" he groaned as they passed a butcher shop.

Sabine kept walking.

"Sweetheart," Fury said, jogging beside her, "mind if I ask where we're going?"

"Yes," she answered curtly.

"Hate to be rude, lady, but we're on a goddamn mission here. I think I have a right to know where you're taking us."

"My name is Sabine, not 'Lady'. If you want my help, just follow me."

He shrugged and followed her down a side street. Fear could tell that Fury liked this woman. He didn't argue with her. He didn't yell. He was oddly placid. Sabine had the same confidence and composure as the Joy radiated, but in Sabine it was almost conceit. Every movement, every note in her voice seemed calculated to create a persona. She was playing characters in layers – the shy little sister with the outer skin removed revealed cool-headed spy Sabine, but there were more beneath that identity.

They stopped in front an old-fashioned book shop, the sort with paneled windows and a hanging sign which read "Livres". Fury held the door for Sabine but let it close on Fear.

The shop owner was like a character in a dime novel. His white hair had receded so far that he only had tufts on the sides of his head. His nose was broad and round, and it held a pair of tiny round spectacles similar to the ones Sabine wore. The shop was empty except for the three of them and the shopkeeper, who finished putting the back cover on the pocket watch he was fixing before he greeted them.

"_Ma fille!_" he shouted, stepping around the counter to hug Sabine.

Fear knew that he used "fille" as a term of endearment. Sabine was not really his daughter.

"Pére, I would like to introduce my new brother Kurt," she said, taking Fury's arm forcefully.

"I thought I said not to bring Nazis in here," the shopkeeper said, grinning.

"Kurt and Fritz are going to Stuttgart, and they need our help."

An hour later, the Fear was dressed in threadbare blue pants and a yellow shirt that had once been white. His uniform and papers were stowed in a hidden compartment in Fury's new suitcase.

"Okay, Fritzy, wrists in front," Fury said, holding a pair of shackles attached to a chain.

"Honestly?" the Fear asked disgustedly.

"Do you want to make your train?" the shopkeeper asked.

Fear sighed and held his arms in front of him. The cold metal clamped tightly around his wrist. He wanted to protest, or at least to give all of them a vicious grin, but he felt like an animal. He was arrested in Spain when he was sixteen. A vegetable peddler was passing through the woods, and Fear had jumped out of a tree to steal his food. He had not hurt the man, although he would hurt others later. Stealing was in his blood, the officer had said. It's just what his type did. They ought to put him down right there, hadn't they? He'd only get worse if he lived.

"I should have drowned you when I had the chance," the wife of the ringmaster had told his 15-year-old self.

"Hey, Fritz, you okay?" Fury asked, breaking Fear from his reverie.

"Yeah."

"What's the problem?" Sabine asked. "Are you Jewish?"

"No," Fear answered. He hesitated. Even Fury knew nothing about his life before the Cobra Unit. It was not a life he was proud of. "I'm Romani," he said finally.

* * *

After Sorrow was snoring fitfully in their compartment, Joy walked out on a platform near the back of the train to watch the stars cross the sky. What would her father think of Sorrow? He was the only Cobra her father had not met. She had only been home once since America had entered the war. That was in 1942, just after Operation Torch. Her father had looked so old and worn. He had lost his sense of humor. Tears filled his eyes when he hugged her.

"I thought when I had a daughter that I was safe from being a military father," he had said, letting tears fall on her uniformed shoulders.

"I did this to you," he had said. "I gave you this destiny."

"No, you didn't," she had said, smiling through her own tears.

He had held her at arm's length, looked her in her mother's eyes and said, "The Philosophers did this. You are not only my daughter. You are their daughter. You and the other children of the Philosophers will be marked as theirs until they kill you."

_He's wrong,_ she thought now, her fingers wrapped around the cool railing on this hot August night in Germany. _I'm fighting for them now because they want what I want. Things will change after the war._

She heard voices inside the car. Two railroad guards met her on the platform between cars.

"Seig heil!" they shouted, saluting when they saw her.

She raised her arm to return the salute. Her mother would have loved to see that. If she had lived longer, she probably would have sympathized with the Nazis. She would have adored their uniforms, their salutes, their statues, and their cars. Joy's mother with her aquiline nose, long and noble, would have sided with the Nazis simply because Joy's father would have hated it.

The guards crossed the platform then leaned against the railing to smoke under the stars. It was a clear, fine night, and Joy wished she had a companion to stand beside her. For a second, she imagined that companion as the Sorrow, blushing shyly and holding her hand, but that was a sentimental image, born from her current familiarity with him. Still, he was an intelligent man. His German was perfect, even if he spoke so formally, and his English was improving. He read every book in English that he could find. Joy read, but she learned better by doing. Reading reminded her of school, which had not been her favorite place. She wondered what sort of teacher Sorrow would be. There were now three Russians in the Cobra Unit, but she knew little of their language. Her father had warned her that the Soviet Philosophers had been hiding some of their actions recently, sending their own agents into Occupied countries without telling the American and Chinese Philosophers. If she planned to be a diplomat after the war, she would need to know the languages of all of the major powers. Perhaps, the Sorrow…

"We couldn't just uncouple the car somehow and leave them there on the tracks to starve?" one of the guards was saying.

"And risk one of our trains hitting it and derailing?" the other asked.

"It was a joke. What I really wonder is why they don't just kill them and bury them in some secluded place like this."

"They need cheap labor in Poland."

"That's not what I heard about Sobibor."

"What did you hear?"

"That they kill them, and some of them they experiment on until they're dead."  
Joy gagged silently. This must be what Sorrow heard. She knew there were crimes, atrocities… but hearing these two men discussing it so nonchalantly made her feel like her body was burning from within. She forced a smile.

"Good night, boys," she said and excused herself into the car. She walked calmly and carefully back to her compartment and dug through her suitcase for her camouflaged fatigues. Packing them was a gamble – if the Nazis searched their bags at any point, they might find them and get suspicious.

"What are you doing?" Sorrow asked, rubbing his eyes.

"What you're too weak to do," she answered, tossing her uniform on a fold-down table and putting a leg into her fatigues.

"Why?"

"Guilt, I guess."

She was dressed in a minute. She searched the room for something that would break a lock. The black umbrella Astrus had given them lay across Sorrow's suitcase. That would have to suffice. She took the umbrella and slid the window open. The space was just large enough for her to pull herself comfortably into the frame.

"Be careful!" Sorrow cried.

"It's not like this is my first time crawling across a moving train," she said, pulling herself through the window and out onto the curved top of the car. She scrambled along the length of the train, thankful their compartment was near the end. The smoking guards had left their platform and gone inside.

She wondered if the Philosophers had known about the prisoners on the train, if they had purposely sent her to free them. They had power and money, but they could not have predicted that she would hear the guards talking, could they?

The last car was locked tightly with a padlock on each side. It would have looked like it was carrying cargo except for the air vents, like on a cattle car, near the top. Joy leaned over one side and wedged the metal tip of the umbrella into the space between the lock and the latch. She put all of her weight on the other end until she heard a loud pop.

The umbrella seemed to have done some damage to the lock, but it was not enough. The tip of the umbrella had broken and now lay somewhere along the railroad tracks in western Germany. Her umbrella too short to reach the lock, Joy tore open her camouflage shirt, revealing a dark undershirt and her pale arms. She tied it to a pipe on the top of the car and turned the rest into a makeshift harness by wrapping the sleeves just above her waist. She let herself drop beside the car.

Her eyes were level with the vents, and a putrid odor wafted from inside. She could see eyes in the darkness, and when these eyes saw her, there was a clamor of voices and hands banging on the side of the car.

"Quiet!" she hissed, but no one listened.

Joy shoved the handle of the umbrella into the lock and pressed her body against the train car. Finally, the lock broke open, and she knocked it off of the latch with her boot. She kicked the door open a few inches and then pulled herself back onto the top of the car.

At first, the people in the car were silent and still. Then a young man shouted, "Jump!" and men, women, and children leapt through the open door and rolled down the embankment. As she crawled back to her own car, Joy heard a few crunches and screams as some of the freed prisoners broke bones or fell under the car. She did not look back to find out.

"They're jumping!" shouted a voice below and behind her.

Rifles fired from the windows, and she was sure some of the shots were hitting their marks. She could not jump the gap between the car she was on and the one with her compartment. Her camouflage was gone, and a man, one of the smokers from earlier, stood on the platform, leaning over the railing to watch the scene at the back of the train. She dropped on top of him, smashing his face against the rail. She dealt him a hard blow to the temple and threw him over the side.

One of the shooters shouted as his car passed the guard's body. By that time, Joy had thrown her camouflaged trousers into the field and swung herself into her compartment. The Sorrow ran to the window to help her. He was surprisingly calm.

"Quick, Sorrow, get naked!" she whispered.

"What?"

She was already unbuttoning his pajamas.

"I can do that," he said, jerking away.

Joy kicked her boots under a table, threw her undershirt into her suitcase, and unbuttoned her bra. Sorrow looked away.

Guards were pounding on doors down the corridor and shouting at the occupants. Joy pulled her underwear down her now hairless legs and tossed them on the floor.

"Yours too," she said to the Sorrow, and he reluctantly removed his last piece of clothing.

They were now completely naked and saw each other in the yellow light that leaked through the curtained window. Joy had powerful arms and pale, muscular legs covered in new bruises and scratches from tonight's escapade. Even with her athletic body, she had womanly curves – hips that widened gently and large, round breasts. She pressed them against his slender chest, only starting to show the strength gained in his training, and laughed loudly and coquettishly so that the guards in the hallway might hear.

"Mmmm, Michael," she giggled, pushing him roughly toward the bed.

He tripped and fell onto the coarse blanket. Joy lay on top of him.

"Quickly, Sorrow. Get on top!" she whispered, rolling herself underneath him.

There was a knock on the door, and Joy screamed theatrically. The compartment door slid open, and the guard's flashlight beam caught the faux lovers in a nude embrace. He quickly turned the flashlight away and scanned the scattered pieces of their Luftwaffe uniforms instead.

"Something the matter, officer?" Sorrow asked, taking to his role.

"Uh," said the young guard, scratching his head. "Someone, uh, stole some cargo from the train, and we're, uh, looking for that… someone. But it seems you were… uh… otherwise disposed."

He looked sheepishly at Joy with the covers clutched to her chest, lifted his hat, and left the compartment. Sorrow snatched his pajamas from the floor and immediately started dressing. Joy, still wrapped in a blanket, took a cigar and a box of matches from her bag.

"Why was _that_ the first thing you thought of?" Sorrow asked, his face red.

"Makes sense, doesn't it?" Joy said, lighting the cigar. "We're married, and it explained why I was out of breath and sweaty."

Sorrow's red cheeks darkened.

"Ah, um," he stammered. "Put that out and get some clothing on!"

* * *

Historical Notes:

French notes: "Livres" means "books"; "ma fille" means "my daughter"

An aquiline nose is one of the features considered part of the Nazi "master race".

Fear says that he is "Romani". If you read the short story I wrote about his childhood called "A Dirge for the Fear", you'll learn a bit more about his background, but I'll explain it simply here. The "Romani people" are an ethnic group in Europe that you've probably heard called "Gypsies". Although Romani were already being targeted for extermination in many Axis-controlled countries, they were not officially declared "on the same level as Jews" until December 1943.

Sobibor was one of the Nazi extermination camps in Poland. Two months after this part of the story, there was a massive escape from Sobibor.


	12. Bad Luck

Chapter 12: Bad Luck

* * *

The train squealed against the rails as it braked at the station in Lille, France. The Pain and the End kept their seats. They would stay on this train until Strasbourg. Some passengers left, and even more got on.

A voice in the crowd of boarding passengers shouted, "Excuse me! Official Reich business. Let me through!"

The End ignored it and settled further into his seat for a nap. He had been born with a fortuitous mutation which allowed his body to draw energy from the sun, but this ability had an unfortunate downside – his energy level fluctuated with the weather. No amount of food or sleep could fix a rainy day, especially as he grew older. Today was partly cloudy with the threat of a storm on the wind. He felt his age as he positioned his wrinkled face in a patch of sunlight.

The train whistle blew, and the voice from outside shouted again, now in the doorway of their car.

"Don't you people listen? Make the engineer stop. This train can't leave the station! Official business, you see."

The End heard the voice pushing down the aisle. It was hollow and far away, like a high-pitched fog horn across a bay.

"This is important! Let. Me. Through. Thank you, mein Herr. Oh, yes, important business. Bugger you, too!"

The voice stopped next to the row where the End sat.

"Oh, um… sir," he whispered, now very near. "The old man. Ah, is he asleep?"

_Yes. Yes, I am. Leave me in peace,_ the End thought.

"I think so," said the Pain.

"Oh," the voice said. "Do you think we can wake him? This _is_ quite important."

Pain nudged him hard in the ribs.

"Hey, Eberhard! Wake up!"

The End turned toward the window with a groan. Pain hit him harder.

Another voice joined the first. A gruff officer said, "Secretary Emmerich, we cannot hold the train much longer."

"Very well," Secretary Emmerich said. "Could you and Herr…"

"Just Bruno, sir," the Pain said politely.

"Could you and Bruno carry the old man between you?"

Of all the indignities! The End stood and gave Secretary Emmerich the wilting look of disapproval that only a man his age can make. Emmerich was a mousy man with mottled brown hair that never lay flat. His silver pince-nez sat upon a nose too large for his face. He held his hand out to the End for a handshake.

"I can walk on my own!" the End grunted, pushing past Pain and Emmerich into the aisle.

Emmerich adjusted his pince-nez, which were tilting to one side, and said, "Herr Schultheiss, I have been informed that you are a crack sniper. I know that you are on your way to Stuttgart, but you will please help us before you go."

It was not a question. Emmerich was a man used to people doing what he asked of them simply because he had been given power by the Reich.

The man with the second voice, a flat-faced railroad guard, sighed and said, "Can this be done _off _the train?"

"Of course," Emmerich said as he started down the aisle.

Pain dragged the End by the arm and followed. They crossed the platform, flanked by guards in black uniforms. A driver in the same uniform waited in a black Mercedes on the street. The End felt a raindrop splash on his bald head. Emmerich held the door and motioned them into the car. He squeezed in beside them.

"Herren," he said, "I apologize for the abruptness of our meeting. You will be compensated. Your transportation will be arranged for…"

"Just tell me why you need me," the End said.

"Ah! Well, that is a long story, a long story indeed, which begins in a rather funny manner…"

"The short version," interrupted the driver, "is that Secretary Emmerich and the staff of the regional Transportation Department have been terrorized by a sniper."

Emmerich gave the End a coward's smile and ran his palm through his hair.

"I'm not sure 'terrorized' is the appropriate word, Johan," he said. "No one has been killed."

"But three have been wounded. Frankly, we don't know if killing is even the sniper's intent, but I know that I dread coming to the station for fear of being the first one the sniper actually kills."

"He is likely a Resistance fighter and an amateur."

"Is there any pattern to the attacks?" the End asked.

"Well, they are all at the station," Emmerich said. "I was the first one he shot at, early Monday morning when I came down for a rail inspection. They are all happening in the morning when the platform is blessedly empty."

"It's no blessing. It's on purpose, but why? He should shoot when the platform is noisy to disguise the direction of the shot."

"Herr sniper," the driver said, "it is only our employees down there most mornings."

"Yes, the wounded were two railway guards and a French office assistant," Emmerich said.

"French?" the Pain asked.

"A young woman, grazed across the arm. She was alone on the platform. It was not a terrible injury, but she will always have the scar. At least, that's what the doctor says…"

* * *

At the regional Transportation Department headquarters, the Pain and the End followed Emmerich to his office. The temporary headquarters was set up in a small school. Emmerich's office was a classroom with the desks piled in one corner and the Nazi flag hung beside the chalkboard. Emmerich pulled two desks from the pile. The End stuffed himself into the tiny seat, but Pain simply leaned against his to avoid cramping his long legs.

Emmerich shuffled some papers on his neatly stacked pile and said, "So, Herr Schultheiss, how much do you want for killing him?"

Pain knew from the moment Emmerich pulled them off the train that this was the question awaiting them. The End did not answer at first, and Pain wondered whether he would. If the boss were here, would she have him do it, if only to keep their cover? He imagined that she would have found a creative way around it, but he could think of nothing. With the End so weak, there would be no escape.

"For the Reich, I will do anything, sir," the End said. Pain could hear his Russian accent slightly and hoped Emmerich could not. The old Russian saluted the Nazi flag with tears in his eyes.

Emmerich looked down at his papers for a moment, and the End crossed himself hastily.

"Looks like I can pay you two hundred Reichsmarks and arrange for your transport to Brussels."

"We are actually on our way to Stuttgart, so if you can get us into Germany… take us at least to Saarbrucken…"

"Of-of course."

There was a soft tap on the door.

"Yes?" Emmerich called. "Come in."

A woman entered with a folded piece of paper. She was young, more a girl than a woman, and a dark blue beret with the Ministry of the Interior badge rested on her reddish blond hair. When the girl smiled at Emmerich, her cheeks flushed, and her freckles darkened across her nose.

"Message from Herr Heinz at the automobile checkpoint, Secretary Emmerich," she said with a curtsy.

Then she lowered her eyes and backed out of the room.

"That was Lille, whom I told you about. Her mother named her for the city where she was born. Lovely girl, but her German needs work. It would have been a shame to lose her to the sniper."

Emmerich read the paper Lille had handed him, then frowned.

"Looks like I have something to take care of. We will find you a place to stay and take care of your needs…"

* * *

The End walked the last mile to the station early the next morning. He had searched the area for positions and interviewed a wounded rail guard. There were bushes along the low-lying station building all the way to a grove of trees, and he was fairly certain that was where the sniper hid. The End climbed onto the roof of that building so that he could see both the hiding place and the entrance to the bushes from the trees. The sun was bright already, and the End felt his youth returning as he lay flat and silent on the roof. A half-hour passed with only a few men at the station. The End watched the trees where, just before seven o'clock, a small figure appeared carrying something long wrapped in cloth. He could not be certain it was the sniper, so he held his fire.

The figure stepped into the sunlight, and he saw that it was Lille from Emmerich's office. The End was glad he had not shot. The girl marched down the hill with a long, thin bag across her back. When she reached the building, she ducked and crawled into the space behind the bushes. From above, the End saw her open the bag and slide an M1917 Enfield rifle, probably given to her by an SOE operative, across the ground. She rested the rifle on her shoulder and waited. The Pain and Emmerich walked into her view, and the End saw her arm stiffen. When the two men separated, she followed Emmerich first. She blushed again as she had done in his office, then turned the rifle on the Pain. Watching her through the scope, the End could see that Lille was much younger than he had first thought. Most of his great-grandchildren were older than her. He did not want to shoot her, but if she hurt the Pain, their mission would be compromised. He found a birthmark just above her left temple and aimed.

With an echoing report from his Mosin-Nagant, it was over. The girl and her rifle fell out of the bushes. Emmerich gasped and ran to her side, but she was dead. Her blood pooled between the bricks.

Emmerich bid the Pain and the End goodbye silently a short while later. The bureaucrat's face was stoic. He had shed his tears at the station, cradling Lille in his arms and staring at the rifle she had once shot at him. Now he held his hand out to the End, but he did not mean to shake hands. He held a white envelope full of the promised money.

"I cannot," the End said.

Emmerich's driver, who stood beside his boss with one hand on his shoulder, said, "Please, Herr Schultheiss. It would put this matter to rest."

The End took the envelope, but Emmerich kept his hand outstretched as if he were frozen.

"Emmerich has arranged for you to ride with this truck driver to Saarbrucken. It should be faster than the train," the driver said. "You should be able to continue on to Stuttgart from there."

* * *

"All passengers stay in your seats or compartments!" a voice in the aisle shouted as Joy packed her suitcase to leave their train in Mannheim.

She ran to the window. The train crawled into the station. Once the engine passed the platform, a guard jumped off to meet a group of Gestapo gathered in the early morning rain. The guard from the train waved a dark piece of cloth, and Joy squinted to see it better. It was her camouflage tunic.

"It's British," one of the Gestapo would be saying right now.

They would search everyone's luggage for a match… or the tools of a spy. She was glad Astrus had not given her the usual gadgetry SOE operatives took behind enemy lines. The search would take hours, but their train would depart in forty minutes.

Three hours later, Joy and Sorrow were standing in the ticket line with half of the passengers from Kaiserslautern. The Gestapo search had been brutal. Children were crying in compartments down the aisle before the officers got to Joy and Sorrow. Their neatly-packed luggage was tossed about the room, and Joy was touched in ways that made Sorrow protest, if only for a moment before the officer shoved him into a wall.

One of the officers slammed Joy's uncomfortable heels against the doorframe while she glared.

"Looking for hidden knives," he explained, handing her the scuffed shoes.

The other officer held her boots.

"What does a lady need with these?" he sneered.

Joy, glad she had cleaned the rust from them, leaned into the officer's face and retorted, "You expect me to fly in the heels?"

The officer dropped the boots and stepped back.

"Thought you were that guy's secretary or something…"

When Joy finally reached the ticket counter, she asked for a ticket straight to Stuttgart. If they did not go by their original route through Karlsruhe, they could make up some time.

"Stuttgart's sold out for two days," the woman at the counter said. "It's limited service, not like before the war."

"Karlsruhe, then," Joy said.

"Same thing."

The rain was falling hard outside now. They had to meet Otto Skorzeny in Stuttgart tomorrow. She wished that she hadn't freed the prisoners.

"Oh, Michael!" she cried. "What will we do? Surely we will be shot as deserters if we arrive late, and after we've only just married!"

The woman at the counter gazed at them indifferently.

"Are you finished then?" she asked. "Because there are no available trains."

Joy scoffed, took her luggage, and sauntered away. Sorrow struggled to keep up as they left the station and stepped out into the rain.

* * *

Historical Notes:

SOE and OSS operatives aided the French Resistance, often with weapons or information. Since the Enfield rifle was used primarily by the English, it was probably an SOE operative.

The Mosin-Nagant was commonly used by Russian snipers. The End uses a Mosin-Nagant modified to fire only tranquilizer rounds in Metal Gear Solid 3.

If the SOE had outfitted the Joy for her trip through France, they may have given her various weapons hidden inside everyday objects (such as the well-known "Kiss of Death", a gun hidden in a lipstick tube). These were easy to identify after confiscated, and they would have recognized immediately that she was a spy had she been carrying them.


	13. Angel and Goblin

Chapter 13: Angel and Goblin

* * *

Sorrow trudged along the side of a paved road leading southwest out of Mannheim. The sun peeked intermittently through the dark clouds, but it was never warm enough to dry their clothes. Sorrow's glasses were wet and streaked from an attempt to dry them on his shirt. Cars sped by, their headlights flaring into sunbursts as the light hit his glasses. Some drove close to the edge of the road, sending up cascades of water that the two ran to avoid. Joy had laughed the first few times that a flume of dirty rainwater hit her, but after an hour of walking, even she looked like a dejected alley cat.

"I wonder how the others are," she said after a dark box truck with barred windows passed.

"Not as bad as we are," Sorrow mumbled.

"You wanted me to do it, to let those prisoners out," she said; then she added in English, "I'll bet not finding the culprit about made the Gestapo shit their pants."

Sorrow was not exactly sure what she had said, but he recognized some of the words.

"Joy, why do you use such foul language?" he asked.

"Oh, now _you_ want to tell me how to be a lady too?" she asked, continuing in English.

"I am not meaning to," Sorrow said, trying the words on his tongue. He had avoided speaking English, though he read it proficiently and had listened to his comrades speak it for almost a year. "I am only quite…"

"Disappointed?"

"No no no no no no!"

That was the word, but he could see that it made her angry. He wished she had not said it.

"I'm a soldier, Sorr- Michael, and, if you haven't noticed, most soldiers are men. If male soldiers are allowed to curse, I will too. To hell with your concept of a lady!"

"Con-sept?"

"Like an idea, how you see something. A… a goddamned _paradigm_!"

The buildings were farther apart, and the road was less maintained as they journeyed out of the city. The road was so narrow here that they had to walk in the grass to avoid cars. Joy had switched to her boots miles ago.

Sorrow heard the rumble of an engine as a black Volkswagen slowed beside him and Joy. She moved closer to him, and he put his arm over her shoulders. The car stopped, and a brawny woman got out.

"Where are you going, soldiers?" she asked in a booming voice.

"Stuttgart," Sorrow answered.

"I'm going as far as Sulzfeld. I'll take you."

"We can walk."

"Pardon me, but I don't think you can walk all the way to Stuttgart. Get in."

She opened the door, and Joy and Sorrow climbed into the seat. It was hot and stifling in the car, but it was dry.

"I'm Bertha," the woman said as she started down the road again.

"I am Michael, and my new wife is Frieda."

"You married recently?"

"Only a week ago, in France."

"Ah, small pleasures in the time of war…"

Bertha and Joy talked of flowers and white dresses and music on the harp. Joy spun the story of their imaginary wedding with ease – how her own family was dead so she had been walked down the aisle by her first flight instructor, how lovely France was even after being bombarded by the Allies.

Sorrow watched the road, a black, glassy river which carried Bertha's car to Sulzfeld. Occassionally they hit some rapids, cracks or ruts in the road from tanks that that had traveled it. Then the car would bounce, and Joy would fall into Sorrow, then laugh as she brushed her hair from her eyes.

"So what were you doing in Mannheim?" Joy asked after the wedding talk was exhausted.

Bertha's expression darkened.

"Looking for news of my husband," she said. "I drive to Mannheim once a week."

Sorrow knew how she felt. The women of his village had come to him in desperation much like hers, but he could not help Bertha without exposing his true identity. Joy was not even his wife, not even his lover, but he wondered how it would feel if he had no news of her. The poor woman! Her husband may have been the enemy, but this woman surely was not.

"Berti…," Sorrow heard a deep voice say just beside his ear. He turned, but he was against the door. No one had been there to speak.

"Berti!" the voice repeated more fervently.

_I cannot speak to her,_ Sorrow said to the voice.

"You must! She drives this route every week for me. She must know," the voice cried.

_No! I'm your enemy, a spy!_

"You are an angel sent by God! I cannot move on until you tell her."

_I thought Nazis didn't believe in God._

"I am not a Nazi. I am a German, and I am a Lutheran. Speak to her please. Please, Michael. I beg it."

_I am not your angel!_

"Please. Please. Please please please please…," the voice repeated.

_I - ._ Sorrow stopped abruptly. He felt like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over his head. His limbs froze instantly.

"Please. Please. Please," the voice continued to echo through his mind, though now it sounded like it was speaking in a long hallway with a stone floor and a high wooden ceiling. A dense fog fell around him, and he felt he could push the fog away if he could only move his arms.

"Güten tag, Michael," said the voice, and now the woman's husband was beside him in the foggy hallway. He had sandy hair and ruddy cheeks. His spirit appeared in a farmer's cotton shirt and denim pants. The man smiled kindly.

"The Lord works in mysterious ways, Michael. He sent you to me at this very moment so that I might contact my wife."

Sorrow tried to open his mouth, but his lips were sealed.

"I know this is a great inconvenience," the man continued, "but I will be borrowing your body for a short while."

He touched Sorrow's face, and immediately the fog cleared. It was an experience very like when Joy's mother had shown him her memory – he could not move, but he was looking through a pair of eyes that moved over the scene. Joy sat beside him, shaking him by the shoulders.

"I'm okay. I'm just… fine," he heard his voice say as if it were coming to his ears through a layer of wet blankets. His eyes moved to Bertha, who was trying to watch the road while glancing constantly back at Joy and Sorrow. Tears obscured his vision.

"Berti…," the man said in Sorrow's voice.

Joy glared, but Bertha stiffened in the driver's seat. She gripped the wheel and slammed the brake.

"Wh-what did you say?" she whispered.

"Berti! Oh, Berti, it's been so long!"

"Aldo!" she cried, throwing herself across Joy to touch him.

"It's not my body, Berti. I cannot stay for long. It was just as you feared. When they found out, they shot all of us. I am afraid they may come for you and Lisi."

"Aldo! There are soldiers in this car! We'll be shot for sure now," she sobbed.

"It was… the only way to warn you. God gave me one last chance to… see you, but my strength… is almost gone. I love you and…"

The fog surrounded Sorrow again. Through it, he heard Bertha shouting, "And? And?" The fog turned black, and then Sorrow awoke in the back of a canvas-sided truck with his head on Joy's thigh. She was talking to a soldier with a rifle across his chest. The soldier saw Sorrow open his eyes and pointed. Joy smiled at the Sorrow for a second; then she slapped him hard across the face.

"How _dare_ you?" she shouted. "Drink until you pass out? That's all you do anymore."

"Uh, I'll get out and walk," the soldier said, hopping out of the open back of the truck.

"Where are we?" Sorrow asked.

"On our way to Stuttgart. You've been out for hours. Did I hurt you?"

"Only my pride. What about Bertha?"

"She shook you for a while, but when you didn't awaken, she started driving again without a word. When we reached her house in Sulzfeld, it was gone."

"Her house?"

"Yes. Torched. Her daughter Lisi got away just in time. She came out of the woods when we got there. Lisi saw the Gestapo do it. They left a sign calling them traitors. Bertha gave me a handful of money for my silence, and I carried you until I saw this unit traveling down the road."

"You took the woman's money?" Sorrow asked, horrified.

"To keep up appearances, you ass."

"Oh."

"I don't want that to happen again, whatever that was."

"I could not help it. That man - ."

"You will help it next time. What if the real you had never come back?"

She brushed his hair back and then, very lightly, she kissed his cold cheek.

* * *

"Excuse me. Dangerous prisoner coming through!" Fury yelled with a cigarette between his lips. He shoved the Fear in front of him.

Because of his uniform, Fear had been shown dignity, if not respect, on their earlier train rides, but as they crossed Belgium into Luxembourg, the other soldiers jeered. He was like a creature from their fairytales. He must be a goblin or the Erlking himself with his eyes that changed from yellow to red and spindly fingers that must have dragged children to their deaths in the forest.

"Get the hell out of my way!" Fury shouted at one young man. "You wouldn't want this guy to touch you. Stink won't come off for a week."

"You're really enjoying this," Fear hissed.

"Sure I am! You know you'd do the same for me, dirty Gypsy."

"You slimy sack of - ."

"Excuse me," Sabine said, sliding past them. She winked at Fury.

Then, keeping Fury's gaze, she pushed something into Fear's palm. Fear felt the tiny object. It was a flat, rough piece of metal – a file. There was a shred of paper wrapped around it. While Fury watched Sabine take her seat down the aisle, Fear transferred the paper to his other hand and opened his palm to read it.

_Precious Fritz, I like you better than Kurt,_ it read.

Fear grinned. He would have let himself get dragged in chains across four continents just to hear her say that in front of the Fury.

* * *

Historical Notes

A note on Nazis' religious beliefs: Although Hitler and other Nazi leaders invoked the name of God and the writings of Martin Luther to support their policies, some members of the government were planning at this time to create a National Church which would replace all Christianity with an odd mix of ancient German pagan beliefs and nationalism. Though Lutherans supported Hitler in the 1930s, many of them joined the less prominent denominations in dissidence during the war.

The Erlking is a character in German folklore ballads sometimes called the "Alder King", a mistranslation of "elf-king" from Danish. He and his beautiful daughter show up in poems and ballads to drag children and warriors to their deaths.


	14. God's Most Beautiful Creatures

Chapter 14: God's Most Beautiful Creatures

* * *

The End and the Pain sat silently in the front seat of a truck bound for Saarbrucken. The End clutched his rifle and slept. He had fallen asleep almost immediately after they had climbed into the truck. It was a warm, bright day, and the old man snored peacefully against the window. Their driver was like a bulldog with a rather furry chin, and he talked constantly, mostly about himself but also about the war – it was bad for business, you see. Pain followed the monologue, agreeing where he should, disagreeing where the driver insulted the government or the soldiers. Fortunately, the man was content to express his opinions and never asked Pain to defend his own.

The rain started again after two hours on the road.

"So how'd you end up with all the scars?" the driver asked.

"House fire when I was a child, no great war injury or anything," Pain answered.

"Oh. They shouldn't put the children's bedrooms so far from the front door. They can't escape quick enough, you see? Was it electrical? If it was, that could have been prevented if the government did a yearly inspection on all houses. You could blame the parents too, though. The government ought to give licenses to have children. If you can't take care of them…"

He continued in that vein for some time until the truck's tires bounced over a deep rut in the road. A loud thud resounded from the back of the truck, followed by a cacophony of squawking and howling. The driver jerked the wheel to one side, and the truck skidded down a small embankment into the weeds.

The End awoke suddenly and shouted, "_Bozhe moi!_ My God!"

When the driver finally stopped, they were hidden from the road behind a line of trees. The man hopped into the underbrush and ran to the back of the truck, cursing the French and their poor road system. Pain followed. The noises grew louder and were joined by a deep buzzing sound like thousands of bees. A mess of broken crates and tumbled cages filled the back of the truck.

"I thought you were carrying weapons?" Pain asked.

"I am," said the driver as he attempted to hide the cages in their shattered crates. "Five thousand specially bred bees."

He kicked one of the closed crates which buzzed madly.

"Only I figured if I was already bringing exotic animals into Germany for some mad general's plan, I may as well make some extra money for myself."

"Brawk! Money for myself," repeated a ruffled green parrot as the driver shoved his cage into a barrel.

Pain watched as the man finished packing his animals, wedging their too small cages into dark crates and barrels. They way he treated the poor creatures! There were birds of all colors, snakes that hissed from inside woven baskets, spider monkeys, and a skittish spotted kitten which crouched in a corner of its cage, unable to lift its head because of the bars.

"Are you sure we'll make it into Germany like this?" Pain asked.

The man hopped out of the truck and answered, "Made it this far. Long as you don't talk, we'll be alright."

"I'm a soldier, sir. It's my duty to talk," Pain said.

"And it will be my duty as a German citizen to tell the next Gestapo I see about your Russian friend. We'd better all stay quiet, _Comrade_."

* * *

Fury watched Sabine open a small compact and put rosy lipstick on her puckered lips. Fear noticed what his comrade did not – that Sabine was slowly turning the base of the compact back and forth while she looked into the mirror. It must have been a transmitter or camera of some sort.

Nervous Sabine was completely gone. She was now playing the lover of some high-ranking Waffen-SS officer. She had replaced her glasses with rouge and eyeliner. Her skirt was shorter, which pleased Fury greatly, and her hair fell loose in stylish waves.

In Ettelbrück, she met them on the platform and told them that she had a friend in town who would feed them without asking questions. She knocked at the back door of a small café on the bottom floor of a narrow stone building. A large-boned woman in a dirty half-apron answered.

"Inge!" Sabine cried, kissing the woman on the lips.

"More friends, Sabine?" Inge asked.

"They'll pay you for dinner with Reichsmarks now, but I'll pay you back for your kindness tenfold next time I'm through."

The woman blushed and wiped her hands on her apron.

"You tease so well, Sabine," she murmured. "Come in, boys!"

At a metal table in the café's kitchen, the four of them savored a dinner of smoked ham, boiled potatoes, and green bean soup. Inge talked constantly and switched between French and German, sometimes mid-sentence. After two steins of schnapps, she spoke mostly French and mostly to Sabine, leaning close to her ear to speak loudly into it. Neither Fear nor Fury knew much French, but Fury heard some familiar words. He intended to learn to curse and flirt in every major language. These were words the French used for both.

He had enjoyed Sabine's attentions, but he now suspected that the woman gave those attentions to everyone she met, tailoring her expressions, words, and even her laugh to the situation. This new woman seemed to desire the company of an energetic and girlish Sabine. The lady spy giggled enthusiastically at every phrase Inge spoke, and the café owner moved closer to Sabine the more she drank.

"We really must go," Sabine said to the woman who was kissing her softly around the edge of her earlobe.

"Do stay, my love," the woman whispered, pulling Sabine closer.

The cooks had been staring at all of them for some time, and Fear did not want to give them any more time to remember his face. Sabine looked so lovely in the arms of the other woman, but missing a train could keep them from reaching Stuttgart on time.

"Thank you for dinner, Inge," he said with a small bow.

It was the first Fear at spoken since they arrived, and Inge was startled by his high, nasal voice. She pulled away from Sabine.

"Pardon me, monsieur," she asked drunkenly, "but what_ are_ you?"

"Inge, please…," Sabine cooed.

The woman kept talking.

"I wondered what he was when you brought him in chains, but - ."

"Excuse me, Madame," Fury interrupted. "Do you have a restroom?"

"Off through that door. As I was saying, Sabine, your other friend is delightful, handsome if he was my type, but this one scares me."

She clung to Sabine like a child.

"Alcohol must be clouding your vision," Sabine laughed. "Standing before you is one of God's most beautiful creatures."

Inge took Sabine's cheeks in her massive hands and kissed her noisily.

"Not humble, are you?" Inge asked.

"I'm talking about Fritz."

"I wasn't drinking when he came in, love. I saw what - ."

"Oh, Kurt, darling! Are you ready to start for the station?"

Inge leaned against the edge of the table and pouted.

"Don't leave me Sabine!" she cried. "When will I see you again?" Then she threw herself at Sabine and wept on her shoulder.

Sabine pushed her off gently while Fear calmly allowed Fury to chain him again. This Sabine was tricky, Fear knew, and part of him sensed that she was teasing him. Still, a sliver of a shred of a thought had lodged itself in his mind. She had smiled at him while she said it, such a pure and candid smile. In that instant, she could have asked him to leave Joy and follow her, and he would have considered it.

They bade Inge goodbye while she blubbered to Sabine. As they walked the dark street back to the station, Fear looked behind them as he always did to make sure they weren't followed. Thick smoke poured from one of the side windows of the café, and hot blue flames climbed the ivy that grew over the building's aged face. He looked at Fury, who stared smugly at Sabine's statuesque legs. As terrible as Inge had been to him, Fear felt for her. In one night, she would lose everything, and she would think it was Sabine's fault.

Sabine left them in Trier. She passed them without a glance, but as she brushed against them, she left Fear with another note. He did not have a chance to read it for several hours, and by that time she would have been halfway to Poland. He unfolded the scrap of paper which read, _Until we meet again,_ with the letters _JPCBG HHEQR APELF HFAPC BHHCJ NFGGA SIPCO BNLBY CBYHC_ across the bottom. A coded message. It was not a cipher he knew, but it looked like a simple enough substitution. "H" would be a common letter, either one found often in pairs or one that both begins and ends words…

Their train pulled into the station in Stuttgart a short time later, but Fear had come no farther in solving the puzzle.

The tracks and platform had been rebuilt since the shelling that summer. Fury heard gunfire in the distance, and the platform was empty except for a kind-faced guard who was paying a young boy for a cigar and a woman in a wide hat with her back turned to the approaching train. The train sounded its horn, and the three people on the platform looked up. Just before the woman in the hat turned to walk down the platform, Fury was certain she had Sabine's face.

"Sabine!" he shouted, though there was no way she could hear him through the train windows and noise. He ran toward the front of the car, jerking Fear behind him.

"It's not her," Fear whispered sharply. "She's on her way to Poland."

"What do you know, you bloody freak?"

"I know you're a lovesick fool, and if you don't get over it in an hour, you'll get reamed by the boss."

"Think I give a shit?"

Fear was his friend and his comrade, but sometimes he was such a pill. He was a goddamned know-it-all, especially when it came to what the Joy would think. It wasn't like he didn't care what she thought, just that she thought too much. Sometimes he wanted to skip the sneaking and just run in there with guns blazing.

They stepped off the train, and Fear tripped on the bottom step. Without his arms free for balance, he fell onto his side.

"Get up, you vile subhuman," Fury grunted, kicking him.

Fear scrambled to his feet. "You'll miss getting to treat me that way."

Fury grinned like a piranha.

Although they had easily made it this far, Fear wasn't sure his disguise had been the best idea. It got them more stares than he thought was safe. He would have to change before they met the Joy and the Sorrow, or they would have to explain to the commander who had suggested such an odd disguise.

Fury searched the platform for the woman in the hat. Satisfied that she was gone, he dragged Fear out of the station. Only a hundred yards down the nearly empty street, a long car with dark windows slowed beside them. The front window rolled down, and Sabine's face, stern and pale, peeked at them from inside the car.

"Get in, boys," she said.

"Why are you here?" Fury asked.

"Who's driving?" Fear asked.

"No time for questions. Just get in."

She pointed a small, pearl-handled pistol out the window at Fury.

"Aw, shit," he said as he opened the back and took a seat. As Fear slammed the door behind them, he noticed that there was no handle to open the back doors from the inside. Sabine kept her pistol on them. A mustached man with dark hair pulled the car into the flow of traffic.

"You're sure it's them?" the man asked.

"Absolutely, Colonel Dietrich. Fear and Fury of the Cobra Unit."

"Will they tell us where she is?"

"They've been trained not to break, I'm sure, but their leader is said to be loyal to a fault. If we let it slip that we're executing them, it may draw the snake out of the basket."

She glanced at Fear, and he saw her eyes turn sad for a moment.

"I am Sabine Demille, the Snake Charmer, and I have tracked you for months, waiting for the right time. I would love to keep you alive for my own pleasure, but after I kill this woman you call 'boss', I'm afraid you will wither and die with her."

"God dammit, Fear," Fury said, slamming himself against the locked door.

Fear sighed and closed his eyes. He hoped that, this time, his impression of Sabine was correct.

* * *

Historical Notes:

"Bozhe moi!" ("moi" is "moy" and not "moi" like the French would say it) means "My God!" in Russian. I've also seen "Moi bog!" used (as in The Cobra Days), but it doesn't seem to be as common.

Ettelbrück is a city in Luxembourg.

Reichsmarks were the currency of the German Reich governments, both before and during the Third Reich.

A substitution code is one where a letter is substituted for another based on a pre-arranged cipher. This could be a poetry cipher (where a poem is used to determine the substitution) or something as complicated as the Enigma machine, a mechanical cipher used by the Germans during World War II. There is a hint about this particular cipher earlier in the story. ;)


	15. Special Unit Friedenthal

Chapter 15: Special Unit Friedenthal

* * *

"It's a rather routine inspection, and it's for your own sake," a young Gestapo officer told the truck driver. "Some cargo was stolen from a moving train just south of here, and there may be other stowaways just waiting to steal something, or worse."

"What's worse? You're crooks just like them, wanting to take my livelihood…"

"Oh, there are worse things," said the officer with a leer of a grin, "much worse things."

The Pain and the End were stopped at a roadblock thirty miles before Saarbrucken. When the driver saw the metal barriers and trucks looming on the road ahead, he had sworn in the roughest German that he would kill every man there and drag their corpses behind his truck. Now he stood with his hat in his hands, scratching his bald head as two officers climbed into the back of his truck. He tried to follow, but the young officer held him back.

"You two," another officer shouted to Pain and the End. "Get down here."

"Your papers," said yet another officer as they climbed out into the light rain.

"You'll see that the Transportation Secretary for Eastern France sent us with this truck," the End said, showing the man the letter Emmerich had given to him. "We are meeting a unit in Stuttgart for an important mission."

"No, no! I wouldn't do that!" the End heard the driver shouting. "Don't shake it like that!"

There was a short yelp followed by a thunderous crash, then buzzing which grew rapidly louder. A cloud of what looked like smoke emerged from the back of the truck. It overwhelmed the officers who were searching the truck and the driver who ran away desperately, waving his hat at thousands of irritated bees. The officers who had been searching Pain and the End ran to help their comrades. They fired their pistols into the impenetrable cloud until they too were engulfed. The driver and all of the Gestapo writhed in the road, screaming, probably dying, and the bee cloud swarmed around the back of the truck. Pain approached it cautiously. He lifted his gloved hands, and bees landed all over his arms. Their buzzing quieted. Once the swarm was gone, the End climbed into the back of the truck and pried open the rest of the crates and barrels. Exotic birds flew into the trees, and the tiny wild cat toddled into the forest. The parrot flapped around the End's head.

"Thank you, Grandpa!" it screeched. "Thank you, Grandpa!"

"Aren't you afraid they'll get killed?" Pain asked, watching the animals scattering into the forest.

"At least they will have died free. Animals are not meant to be kept in cages."

He pulled himself into the driver's seat, and the parrot followed, landing on his shoulder.

"Me too!" squawked the parrot.

"I'm sorry, little beauties," Pain cooed to the bees as he herded them into a crate.

Then he climbed into the seat beside the End, and the two nature lovers left nine bodies strewn across the road outside of Saarbrucken.

* * *

"So, shall we discuss your payment?" Dietrich asked, turning down an empty street.

"We can do that later, Colonel," Sabine answered, her eyes still on the Fear.

"I'm sure our friends would love to hear what their lives are worth to you."

The pistol shook in her hand.

"Was it five thousand marks?"

Her eyes narrowed.

"Or five hundred marks?"

Her lips tightened.

"Or something else entirely?"

He grasped her arm, and she turned her pistol on him, firing four times before he could speak. His hands jerked the wheel involuntarily then dropped and fell still. The car spun toward the buildings lining the street.

"That's the payment I wanted!" she screamed, taking the wheel and straightening the car.

Sabine climbed onto the man's body and stopped the car in the street. She cut into the top of her suitcase and pulled out the pieces of a sten gun. Taking Fury's face in her hands, she kissed him. Then she kissed Fear.

"Now run! Get to your commander. She doesn't know me, but I have admired her for a long time."

"But haven't you…?" the Fear asked.

"Turned you in to the Germans?" she laughed. "No. Just to one greedy one who is too dead to remember you now."

Fear thought of what the Sorrow would say and wanted to disagree with her. Sabine opened the back door from the outside.

"Get out of here! I'll cover you. This is my last stand… until we meet again."

They ran down an alley and looked back to see two dark cars converge on Sabine from both ends of the street. They were already firing at her, and she ducked behind Dietrich's car.

"Dammit! We should so something!" Fury shouted over the din of gunfire.

"Forget it, Fury. If we didn't get killed, the boss would have our heads anyway."

"God, I wish I had some dynamite."

"Shut up!" Fear yelled as he dragged Fury down the alley. When they were well out of sight of the Germans, Fury removed Fear's chains.

"You have no idea how good it feels to move my arms," Fear moaned.

"Couldn't you have just, you know, dislocated your wrists and freed yourself?"

"I was keeping the disguise, and I think I did one hell of a - ."

"Shit, Fear. We left our suitcase in the car."

"I have my Soldbuch," Fear said, holding it for Fury to see and grinning.

"You little _freak_!"

"Only thing I could grab, though."

"Enough people have clothing on the line. You could probably steal some."

"Great idea."

Before he had finished speaking, Fear was crawling over the brick wall that loomed over them. He reached a clothes line and wrapped his arms and legs around it. It sagged dangerously from his weight, so he wedged himself into a window and pulled the line. He tossed a white shirt and some blue slacks to the Fury.

A woman screamed inside the apartment. She must have seen him pressed against the window. Fear dug his thin fingers into the cracks between the bricks and propelled himself down the wall. He jumped the last ten feet as the woman's husband came to the window and cursed at the Fear in German. Fury had already disappeared into a street on the other side of the alley, and Fear ran after him, taking a moment to wave at the couple in the window.

* * *

_This man is a Nazi. This man is your enemy,_ Joy reminded herself as she shook Otto Skorzeny's large and welcoming hand. He was, and Joy felt immediately guilty for thinking this, everything she expected in a commander. He was tall with broad shoulders and a face that was round but tough. Her eyes followed the long scar that ran down the left side of his face.

"A dueling wound, Lieutenant Fuerst," he said. "Few meet me without staring."

"It's…," she began. "It fits, sir."

This was the captain of SS Special Unit Friedenthal, a man hand-picked by Hitler to serve under General Karl Student for the operation they called "Oak".

He greeted Sorrow warmly. Their need for an engineer was great so far from a base with the planes and gliders they were using for reconnaissance. Joy noticed that Sorrow stiffened slightly when Skorzeny mentioned reconnaissance. Sorrow was eager to use his talents in the war, and he likely felt he had been nothing but a hindrance to the Cobra Unit. He had already risked their mission twice with his uncontrolled powers, and slipping up in front of Skorzeny meant certain death, possibly of the slow, excruciating sort.

"We have five more men meeting us before we can leave again for Italy," Skorzeny said. "If the two of you are an indication, this group will be a great asset to my unit."

"If I may ask," said the Joy, "who are they?"

"A sniper, fine old man who fought the Russians in Stalingrad."

Three of the End's grandsons had fought at Stalingrad… for the Russians.

"A paratrooper familiar with rough terrain like we'll see in Italy."

That was the Fear.

"A skilled mountain climber from the Waffen-SS. He'll be great on the ground with the commandos."

And that was the Pain.

"It may seem like a strange addition, but we have a Gestapo officer coming. He is an expert in infiltration and intercepting communications."

Joy cringed inwardly. The Fury was probably her worst casting. He had the subtlety of a bull and had never intercepted a communication.

"And finally a lieutenant with the Fallshirmjäger, another paratrooper who has been fighting since the very beginning of the war."

This was someone new.

"And the rest of your men are in Italy?" she asked.

"With General Student," he answered, slightly disgusted. "They call me up here to pick you up, no offense meant to you, of course, Lieutenant. It's only… I felt we were so close to finding him, and things never go well when you're gone."

The man smiled, showing his perfectly straight teeth. His tiny mustache spread with his upper lip, giving his mouth a Cheshire-cat grin. Astrus had reminded Joy of her father, but the resemblance was nothing to Skorzeny. He was Joy's father at the worst of the Depression when he was still training the test pilots at Wright Field. Her father didn't have the scar, but he had the smile and, at that time, the mustache.

She had never liked facial hair. It belonged on old men, she would tell her father when he was teaching her to fly. At fifteen, her dream was to fly experimental aircraft, and if she had stayed in the States instead of running off to England when the Army turned her down in 1939, she would have achieved it. Flight school had been her reward for the language lessons she had taken since the age of five. Certainly her father regretted making that promise to her.

"Do you fence, Lieutenant?" Skorzeny asked.

It felt good to have a real rank. In SAS, she had been a special advisor. When she took command of Special Operations Unit Zero, they simply called her "Commander". Officially, she was part of the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, but because her unit's missions were covert, she was off the rolls, barely even a citizen.

"I took lessons as a teenager," she answered.

"Excuse me for saying this, but you hardly look older than a teenager now," he said. "All I mean is… surely you remember the basics."

"Probably enough."

"Good. I wonder if we might spar a bit. I'm partial to saber, and I don't have any real foils, but I have some wooden rods," Skorzeny said. He turned to the Sorrow. "My apologies, Herr Fuerst, for borrowing your wife. Her charm is irresistible."

"I-it's fine," Sorrow stammered.

Joy felt as though Skorzeny had planned this. He handed her a wooden dowel already wrapped at the pommel end in a length of bandage. She took a leather glove from her bag and curved her right hand around the dowel. They bowed properly like two classmates about to do a demonstration duel for the new students. She had learned fencing one-on-one with a friend of her father's. She preferred unarmed Asian martial arts, but epée fencing was a graceful break from the often brutal judo she practiced. The dowel was not weighted like an epée or a foil, but it moved easily between Joy's fingers. She swished it left and right to parry his blows then spiraled the tip in to land a point on his chest. None or her ripostes landed; Skorzeny parried too quickly. He stepped back, daring her to attack. She took his bait and almost missed his riposte. Then, as she parried, her dowel hit nothing, and she felt his press her hard under her left breast.

"You have the first point," she said, pulling back into her starting position.

"Konrad is here," Sorrow announced from the doorway.

Joy and Skorzeny bowed again before going to meet Fury. Joy peeled her hair from her sweaty face and tied her bandanna around her head again. She had seen her reflection in a mirror back in Marquise, and she rather liked how the dark green fabric looked against her blond hair. She let the tails hang loosely in the back like she had seen her sensei wear a bandanna he called "hachimaki".

"About time!" Fury shouted, marching across the room to Joy and Skorzeny when they entered. "They stopped Fritz at the entrance and won't let him in."

He spoke first to Joy, and she rolled her eyes toward Skorzeny to indicate the person Fury should be addressing.

To Skorzeny, he said, "He has lost his uniform because he's too stupid to - ."

"I'll take care of it," Skorzeny said. He left the three Cobras alone in the room.

"Fury, I swear I'll rip your tongue out!" Joy whispered angrily. "Did you get into any trouble?"

"Aw… shit, Joy! You sent me with the overgrown monkey. Of course we got into trouble. We about got killed today, and - ."

Skorzeny entered with Fear, who looked gaunt and tired.

"Seems your friend's bizarre appearance put one of the secretaries off," Skorzeny said, "but in my unit, looks are of no consequence."

* * *

Historical Notes:

The sten gun Sabine uses is a portable submachine gun broken down into pieces for easy concealment. I imagine that it's a Sten Mark II with a suppressor.

Otto Skorzeny really _did_ have a dueling wound that he was quite proud of. Look at pictures of the man. It looks pretty cool, and I think Joy would have liked that somehow.

General Kurt Student was a reconnaissance pilot during World War I and served as the commander of the Fallshirmjäger during World War II. He was heavily involved in Operation Oak.

Wright Field, now known as Wright Patterson Air Force base, was and still is one of the most important experimental flight fields in the country. It sits near Dayton, Ohio. I grew up 30 miles from Wright Patt, and I saw the jets flying over every day. I wanted to plant in Joy a desire for experimental flight that would lead her to join the Mercury Project when she was much older.

SAS, the Special Air Service, was formed in 1941 as "L" Detachment. In Metal Gear Solid canon, the Joy (The Boss) and David Oh (Major Zero) formed "L" Detachment. Joy was there as a special advisor, but I assume this was after she spent two years proving herself to the English. I'm moving the formation of "L" Detachment earlier a bit in history to fit the rest of her story in. Darn Peace Walker for messing with my fanfic!

The Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, or WAACs, were women who assisted the U.S. Army early in World War II. Unlike many other nations, the U.S. did not have a history of women in the military (except a few who disguised themselves). The WAACs were in non-combat roles only, and they weren't considered part of the regular army until their name was changed to WAC late in 1943. The WAACs were only started in 1942, so Joy was turned down by the Army in 1939.

A hachimaki is a bandanna in Japan. Usually, they are long strips of fabric with kanji and/or the rising sun in the center.


	16. Wolves

Chapter 16: Wolves

* * *

Light snow fell on Berlin in late November, three months after their mission in Italy. Joy had been missing for three days, and the rest of the Cobra Unit had explained to Skorzeny at least twice a day that none of them had the slightest idea where she was. The Allied bombing had quieted, and the city looked like a powdered cake with its coating of frost and snow. The End hunkered in the window of the room he and the Pain shared with another man. He felt like a traitor, taking orders from an Austrian, wearing an SS uniform. Perhaps he had truly been too old to go to war again. After all, his first great-great-grandchild had been born just before he left for the front. A man his age ought to be enjoying his remaining years surrounded by his family.

The Pain had taken none of his usual pleasure in abusing his poor subordinates the last three days. Today even marching a couple of miles seemed like a cruel waste of time. He tended the apiary he had built in a maintenance closet. The sound of the bees circling his head was a small comfort.

No one, including Skorzeny, wanted to go near the Fury. He had loved three women in his life, and he had lost all of them. It was the goddamned Sorrow's fault. Fury knew there must be something going on between them. Joy must have left after a fight or something. Damn women.

The Sorrow shivered in the bed he had shared with the Joy. The room swam when he opened his eyes. He had a high fever and a frightful cough. Despite his condition, Sorrow was the one Skorzeny questioned most. He would pull a chair up to the bed and ask if Sorrow was absolutely certain Frieda had not said anything before she left. Sorrow saw his own misery mirrored on Skorzeny's face. Skorzeny loved her too.

The Fear bent his head over a desk in his room at the hotel in Berlin. He scribbled notes under and around the string of letters he had copied from Sabine's note. He had tried every cipher he knew but come up with nonsense. The note was now almost three months old, and surely Sabine's message was no longer important. But she had wanted Fear to decipher it, and he could not let the message die with her.

He had waited until five days ago to tell anyone else about the note, somewhat out of embarrassment but mostly because it was his personal challenge. After almost three months of staring at the jumble of letters, he took the note to the Joy.

"You say a woman on the train gave you this?" Joy had asked sternly.

Fear had not told her about his and Fury's adventures with Sabine but simply that a woman had given the note to him. He nodded in answer to Joy's question.

"Did she give you any other notes, a page from a book or anything? It could be a poetry cipher of some sort. Looks rather simplistic."

Fear remembered the odd scrap of paper she had passed to him, the one that began, "Precious Fritz". A warm lump formed in his throat. That was something even Joy could never know.

"Nothing," Fear said. "I had never seen her before."

Joy gazed at him sideways with her lips pursed as if she suspected he was lying.

"Well, then she must have mistaken you for someone else," Joy said.

Fear had let the conversation end that day, and now that Joy had left, he doubted they would ever continue. Sabine was gone. Joy was gone. Fear made a grid with the letters of Sabine's first note and the alphabet. _RIERU SSIKE…_ Nonsense already. As he crossed this note out, Fear noticed a combination of letters – "RUSSI", the beginning of "Russia". All of the letters it used were in the word "Precious". He made a grid again, this time using each letter of the first note only once. _THERU SSIAN PHILO SOP –_

Footsteps in the hallway interrupted his decoding. He folded the paper to the size of a dime and swallowed it in case anyone searched him.

Without knocking, Skorzeny entered with four of his men who immediately took the Fear roughly by both arms. Skorzeny aimed his Mauser HSc between Fear's eyes, but his face was compassionate and sad.

"I hate to do this, Fritz," he said, "but I am loyal to my Fuhrer, and I can't let you continue your charade now that your commander is gone."

* * *

The Pain left the truck he and the End drove to Stuttgart in a field outside the city. He stowed the smuggler's bees in a backpack which he carried gingerly as if it were a child. The End's parrot had picked up some unfortunate Russian phrases from his new owner's sleep talk, and the Pain had made a somewhat successful effort to teach the bird to keep silent.

Clouds had covered the sky since the day they left Lille, and while the End could lay back and absorb what little sunlight came through while he rode in the truck, just walking used all of his precious energy. After only a mile, he was leaning on Pain. They walked another mile like that before the End collapsed in the grass.

"Come on, old man, the boss is waiting for us," Pain said, lifting the End's limp arm.

"A little food might help," the End wheezed.

"I've got a block of cheese left."

"That might do it."

The End nibbled the fist-sized chunk of sharp cheddar before stuffing all of it violently into his mouth.

"Save some for me!" squawked his parrot.

When he was finished, the End pulled himself to his feet and smiled.

"Part of me is thinking you did all of that just to get the rest of the cheese," Pain muttered.

"Not at all," said the End, picking a crumb out of his beard and tossing it into his mouth, "but if I had, would you blame an old man?"

* * *

"My dear Frieda," Skorzeny laughed, downing a third cognac as they waited for the rest of his new recruits to arrive in Stuttgart, "you have already impressed me, and I haven't even seen you fly. If the higher-ups knew what they were doing, you'd be a general. Hell, you could even replace Herr Göring."

Joy laughed cordially, glancing sideways at Sorrow who shifted nervously in his chair.

He knew that he should say something to remind Skorzeny that Joy was his wife, but he saw such a similarity between them that he wondered if, perhaps, Skorzeny was a better match for her. The two commando leaders were on opposite sides of the war, but they were both… he did not have an English word to describe it. They were _voyevoda_, something like warlords or pack leaders. Men like Sorrow, Fury, and Fear would be content to follow them, even into a losing battle.

From the hallway, a woman's voice called, "Excuse me!"

A squat secretary opened the door and then stepped aside for a man who belonged on German army recruitment posters. He looked about thirty with a long, handsome face and blonde hair parted neatly to the left. His shrewd blue eyes skimmed the room, studying each of the occupants for a moment before moving on. Satisfied that he was in the right place, the man bowed to Skorzeny and said, "I am Lieutenant Schirmer of the Fallshirmjaeger, but they call me 'The Old Boy'. You must be Captain Skorzeny."

"Indeed I am," Skorzeny said, standing to greet his unit's newest member. "Welcome to Friedenthal, Old Boy."

* * *

In Italy, Skorzeny tasked Joy with creating small commando groups out of his unit. The men who had been with Skorzeny on past missions were perfectly disciplined and quite aware of the time limit on their mission. The SS men that General Student brought in were loud and impudent. Every one of them knew everything there was to know about everything. All of them were sharpshooters and ace pilots and experts with every weapon. They were all leaders, of course, and there was nothing a _woman_ could teach them.

Joy bit the inside of her lip in frustration until it bled. Each soldier was so eager to prove himself that none of them was willing to be anything but a squad leader. She lined them up like she sometimes did with her own unit. Some stood at attention, but most willfully ignored her, instead chatting with the men next to them.

"You can ignore me if you'd like," Joy shouted.

"Sure thing, boss," said the man who called himself "The Old Boy" with a roguish grin. He said "boss" in English.

Then he turned away and continued his conversation.

"But if you choose to ignore me, there's a good chance you won't live through this mission," Joy continued. Skorzeny had given her permission to use any method she wanted to get Student's men in line. The taste of blood in her mouth washed away Joy's frustration. She was a warrior. OSS, SAS, the Army – she had won them all, and hadn't they all been this way at first? Excitement pricked at every nerve in her body – a thirst for battle.

"You won't live through this mission," she repeated, "because I'll kill you myself!"

Every soldier turned to her, some startled by the harshness of her voice and others perhaps with the intent to mock her. Not one man spoke. Her face was enough to silence them.

"If you won't accept the leaders assigned to your squad by your commanders, I will make new assignments. The first man to fight me in hand-to-hand combat will lead the first squad. It is not necessary to defeat me."

The soldiers remained still and silent. Joy imagined the worst of them considering whether leading a squad was worth hitting a woman, especially one Skorzeny seemed so keen on. Finally, Old Boy stepped forward, face set sternly and arm raised in the Reich's infamous salute.

"I will fight you, sir!" he barked.

"Very well," she said, taking her bandanna from a pocket and tying it above her brow.

Her opponent was untrained in unarmed combat, and he fell easily. Still, she felt his body responding to her movements, absorbing her throw with natural grace. He was ready to learn.

* * *

Otto Skorzeny leaned over a rickety wooden table in a basement room of the German base near Rome. His height was even more impressive when he was the only one standing. Fury and three other men sat around the table.

"We're closing in on the target after a _month_ in this Godforsaken country," Skorzeny said, hitting the table with his fists for emphasis. "With our new members, we will finally finish our mission."

The men muttered their agreement.

"Konrad," Skorzeny said, turning his intense gaze on the Fury. "You're a hunter, and I need a wolf like you to find the fox's den."

* * *

"Shit, Sorrow," Fury growled, pacing the room. "I hate to say this, but I need your help."

"Skorzeny wants you to find Mussolini?" Sorrow asked with raised eyebrows.

"Yes," Fury sighed, punching the doorframe.

"I will help you," Sorrow said.

"Honestly? Easy as that?"

"Y-yes?"

"Hell, the Fear would've made me promise him half my rations for a week or something."

"You are my comrade, Fury. I would die in your place if it were required."

"Ugh. I doubt it will come down to that. I just need information. I've been holding him off for two days, but I need something to show tonight."

"You could have asked me sooner."

"Yeah…" Fury frowned. Sorrow did not need the Fear's ability to read emotions to know that Fury was embarrassed to ask for help.

"You probably do not want to go back to him with Mussolini's exact location. It may look suspicious," Sorrow said. "I will give you some worthwhile information to keep Skorzeny happy."

Sorrow pushed a chair against the wall and sat with his head back.

"Lock the door," he said. "This will take concentration, and I do not want to wrong people to see me do this."

Fury locked the door and watched his comrade close his blue eyes.

Sorrow sent a silent cry like a shock wave through the tangle of voices. Those of little consequence fell away like sand through fingers. His mind probed the spirits that remained. The newly deceased acted much like the living, keeping secrets and distrusting strangers, but because the soul is made up mostly of the mind, the barrier between what is thought and spoken becomes thin. Spirits told Sorrow most of what they knew, often more than they wanted to tell.

Plenty of noble Italians who probably held no real secrets called him "Communist scum". He ignored them and searched further across the dark plane for one who had died knowing where Mussolini was being taken. The voice he found was a child's.

A young boy, likely no older than thirteen, said, "I know where they've taken Il Duce!"

_How do you know this?_ Sorrow asked.

"Why are you looking for him?"

_I need to speak to him._

"Will you hurt the men who are guarding him?" the boy asked fearfully.

_No,_ Sorrow lied. He hoped no one would harm the guards, but this was war.

"Promise me you won't," pleaded the voice.

Sorrow tried to penetrate the boy's thoughts, but his spirit was stubborn.

_I promise,_ Sorrow said.

"If you're lying, I'll-I'll haunt you forever!"

Joy would have laughed, but Sorrow heard the pain in the child's voice. He was a child who would have, and perhaps had, given his life to protect this family. Now that he was dead, he had nothing to give.

_I am not lying. I will protect your father,_ Sorrow said.

"I never said - !"

_You did not need to._

"A-alright. He's in a hotel at Gran Sasso, the Imperatore, but you won't be able to get up there except by air. The roads are all blocked off."

The boy continued, telling Sorrow what color and shape the building was, how many guards they would find, what sort of weapons the guards carried. Sorrow thanked him and promised once more not to harm his father before opening his eyes.

"Took you long enough," grunted the Fury. "I expected you to _do_ something, start speaking in strange voices or rolling your eyes around at least."

"I can if it would give you confidence in my abilities," Sorrow answered with a small, rare smile.

He tried to stand, but dizziness forced him back into the chair. He had burned a lot of energy.

"Tell Skorzeny that you should look in the mountains near Rome, particularly around Gran Sasso, for a red brick hotel with every road near it blocked," Sorrow said.

Fury left without thanking him. Then Sorrow, still smiling, closed his eyes again and slept.

* * *

Historical Notes

The Mauser HSc was the pistol carried by the Waffen-SS.

Hermann Göring was the Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe starting in 1935. He had become unpopular with the Nazi Party by 1943, so Skorzeny is making a joke here that he ought to be replaced by the Joy.

"Voyevoda" were actually, _technically_, local governors in Eastern Europe and Russia, but I tweaked the meaning of the word a bit to make it fit the meaning assigned to it in _Metal Gear Solid 3_.

This isn't exactly an historical note, but it's a note about _Metal Gear_. Those not familiar with all of the _Metal Gear_ games may not understand why this random "Old Boy" character is spending so much time in my story. Old Boy was one of the members of Dead Cell in _Metal Gear Solid 2_ who was cut from the game before it was finished. He was to be a German soldier who had fought in World War II and attained heroic status. What is a _Metal Gear _fanfic set during World War II if it doesn't have Old Boy in it? Not much is known about the character, and the only image that exists is from the comic book, so I thought I'd go and give him some personality.

Il Duce, or "the leader", was a term Benito Mussolini used to refer to himself.


	17. The Joy's Plan

Chapter 17: The Joy's Plan

* * *

The sun was just beginning to show its pink aura over the trees when Pain washed his face in the bathroom sink. He dried his face on his sleeve and pulled his balaclava back over his scars.

Once, in the last days before she left Camp X, Joy had asked him to remove it.

"Why?" Pain had asked.

"You need to stop hiding," Joy said, smiling with her entire face. "I want to see _you_."

He put a few gloved fingers at the base of the mask and began to lift it. Then he stopped. Joy was the only woman to treat him with any dignity since his mother had died, and he did not want to scare her. She knew about his scars, of course, but seeing them might drive her away.

"No," he said.

"Then at least take off a glove," she said, pulling at the fingers of one of his gloves. He let her remove it.

Joy smiled more radiantly and slid her large hand into his even larger one with its discolored welts that had never fully healed. He had lifted a burning beam with those hands, but his mother had still died.

"That wasn't hard," Joy said. "Now, I'll hold your hand while you take off the mask."

"I really shouldn't."

"You will."

Pain breathed deeply and lifted his balaclava. Joy's smile did not fade. She let go of his hand and brushed her fingers across the purple-brown patches that covered his face.

"You have earned those scars, Pain," she said, "and I will be proud to have a man with your courage in my unit."

On Joy's orders, Pain had gone without the balaclava from Marquise to Stuttgart, but he had covered his face before meeting Skorzeny. The tidy scar that crossed Skorzeny's left cheek only added extra dignity to the man who almost matched Pain in height. Pain thought his own scars must look amateur compared to the Nazi's, won in some accident rather than a feat of heroism. The other men would surely compare them.

Pain turned away from the sink to find the Fear slouching in the doorway with a wide grin across his angular face.

"I wondered how you were keeping everyone from seeing your face," the Fear hissed. "You get up early to wash alone."

"What brings you here at this time, Fear? Have another nightmare?"

Pain immediately regretted saying that. It was something the Fury or the Fear himself would say. Fear's smile vanished, and his face blanched; then he recovered.

"Didn't expect to hear that from you," he said. "Seems we're not the only ones up. I saw the End on my way here intent on some project."

"What?"

"Looked like he was doing something to his rifle."

The End had been quiet since they left Lille. In the truck, he had clutched his Mosin-Nagant like a child clutches a stuffed toy.

"You know why he'd be doing that?" Fear asked.

"No idea."

"You know, that strange buzzing sound you've been making since you got here is going to be a serious problem when we're sneaking in someplace."

"I'm training them to keep quiet."

"Training who?"

"I'll show you, but don't tell anyone yet."

Pain opened the pouch he wore on his hip, and fifty bees flew out. Fear threw his hands in front of his face and backed into the wall. Pain opened a tiny vial and waved it over the pouch. The bees, as if drawn there magnetically, flew back into the darkness.

"I've been experimenting with smells that attract them, something called 'pheromones'," Pain said, closing the pouch.

"Why in the hell would you want to do that?" Fear cried.

"These bees were bred to attack en masse and dig into the body like bullets. I saw them kill five men in a minute."

"And why haven't they killed you?"

"My skin is too leathered from the burns, and… well… I'm nice to them."

Fear rolled his eyes.

"The freaks come out before the sun," he said. "I'm going to go eat something, and it won't have honey on it."

Pain followed him out and saw the End nestled into a wide windowsill. The old man had his rifle in pieces on his lap, and the parrot rested with its head down on his shoulder.

"Good morning, old man," Pain said.

"Morning, Pain," the End answered, inspecting the barrel. "You've at least got some courtesy. The Fear slinked through here twice without saying a word."

Pain nodded.

"You probably wonder what I'm doing," the End muttered.

"Yes. A bit."

"Well, I have vowed never to kill again." He patted his rifle. "I'm modifying her to shoot tranquilizer darts."

* * *

"Without firing a shot?" Skorzeny asked, lifting his dark eyebrows.

Joy leaned across the table, pressing her palms against the wood.

"You don't believe me," she said.

"I'll admit that I don't, but you have already taught me not to underestimate you. Honestly, Frieda, I don't see why. We could overtake them easily if we shot some of the guards outside and stormed the place."

She had expected him to ask her why, but now, with his eyes so cunningly staring through her, all of the answers she had practiced seemed flimsy. The true reason was Sorrow. He had begged for an hour the night before that Joy find a way to avoid killing anyone in the rescue.

"Another ghost you want to help?" Joy had asked with perhaps a bit more vitriol than was necessary.

"You call them that as if they weren't real," Sorrow had mumbled with his eyes down.

At the end of their argument, she agreed to talk to Skorzeny just once.

"I have a feeling, Captain," Joy began.

"Please, Frieda, call me Otto," Skorzeny said, moving closer to her side of the table.

"You are of higher rank, Captain," Joy said, pushing herself away from the table.

"Frieda. _Frieda_," he said. "Do you think that matters to me outside of battle?"

"We're discussing battle tactics, sir. You should call me 'Lieutenant'."

"You've assigned me such a superior status that I guess I may call you whatever I want."

His eyes glimmered in the low light.

"Now, Frieda," he said, softly and slowly, "if you insist that we keep this conversation on topic, tell me why we shouldn't kill every last traitor in that place."

"It's our image in the eyes of the Italians," Joy answered, making up a new answer. "When we win this war and reinstate Mussolini as their leader, they will remember that an Austrian, their age-old enemy, led a force into Italy and killed men guarding a leader they believe was rightly deposed."

"Damn the Italians!"

"Yes, but if we bring an Italian commander in with us, he will issue the orders, and the Austrian is blameless because he never harmed anyone."

"I see…"

"It may be more difficult, sir, but I think you will find that more respect is due those who resist killing."

Skorzeny gazed at Joy as he sat in a chair and pulled himself closer to the table.

"So… whom do you suggest we take into Gran Sasso with us?" he asked, running his thumb across his bottom lip.

"Ferdinando Soleti, commander," Joy answered.

Skorzeny sighed. "I do wish you would call me Otto."

"I don't see why it matters. As I was saying, sir, Soleti is in Rome, and he knows Mussolini. I doubt Soleti would want to see him killed."

"So you suggest we talk to Soleti, convince him to join us?"

"No, Otto," Joy said. "I suggest we kidnap him."

* * *

On the twelfth day of September, Skorzeny and Joy drove to Rome. The Sorrow had found Soleti for them, and Fury had passed the information to Skorzeny. Joy had chosen Fear and Old Boy to accompany her on the mission. They planned to wait until dark and then take Soleti directly from his lover's apartment. To avoid driving a car conspicuously into the city at night, they arrived early in the day. Skorzeny had a safe house near the apartment Soleti frequented.

The four soldiers were in civilian clothes when they met Rimini, Skorzeny's contact in Rome. He was a quiet man with a stony face and dark blue eyes. Rimini's modest home had a small garage where Skorzeny left the car.

"I don't see why you two get to go out to dinner tonight," Fear complained on his third glass of red wine.

"What did he say?" Rimini asked in Italian.

Skorzeny translated. He spoke Italian well, one of the many reasons he had been given this mission. Joy could understand it fairly well, and Fear knew Spanish from his childhood years in Spain. Italian was similar enough that he understood some words and phrases. Poor Old Boy knew no Italian, and Rimini knew no German, so Skorzeny found himself translating inane conversation.

"We need to see when they leave the restaurant, Friedrich," Joy answered.

"Couldn't I go?" Fear asked. Joy reminded herself not to give him alcohol again.

Old Boy laughed and almost spilled his glass of wine. Joy looked at him stonily then turned to Fear.

"You'll need to be outside the woman's apartment to climb the wall when we give you the signal. No one else can do that," Joy said.

A door opened in the entryway.

"Papa!" cried a young and excited voice. "I passed!"

"Luciano!" Rimini called.

A dark-haired boy clamored into the dining room. When he saw the strangers sitting with his father, his broad smile fell, and he stared at them with the same blue eyes his father had.

"Luciano," Rimini said, standing to greet his son, "these are friends."

"Foreigners," said the boy, backing into the doorway. "They're Germans, aren't they?"

"Yes, my son," Rimini said cautiously. "Germans."

"They… they shouldn't be here!" the boy shouted, pointing at Skorzeny and his companions. Then he turned his back and tore up the stairs.

"We're sorry," Joy said in Italian.

Rimini wiped his brow.

"It is not your fault. It's these damned teachers. I made a decision to stand by my leader, and my son will learn to live with it."

* * *

The humid night wrapped Rome like a leather glove as Joy and Old Boy wandered arm in arm toward a café that had stood through two wars in its dark brick building. It was just a short walk from both Rimini's house and the mistress's apartment. The café was filled with an air of cautious celebration. The war was far from over, but the Allies had invaded, and all would be well… for those who supported the Allies. The café owner had taken a chance and declared his support for the invasion with a hand-painted sign over the door reading, "Welcome to Americans!"

"Americans! I have you a special table," a short maitre d' said when Joy and Old Boy stepped through the door.

Joy, in her American nurse's uniform, gazed around the cramped café. Soleti was huddled in a private booth near the back with a woman whose dark hair was plaited to her waist. A few diners glared at the newcomers, faces soured with disgust at foreigners.

Joy tightened her grip on Old Boy's arm and cried, "Tom, dear. Do you really want to eat here? It seems so unfriendly."

"It is the only place open this late. Aren't you hungry?" Old Boy said without a hint of an accent. They had practiced a script earlier to get around Old Boy's tenuous knowledge of English.

The maitre d' led them to a round table outside. The owner must have requested that any American guests be placed prominently in front in order to attract more American money into his restaurant. Joy cursed her own stupidity silently. She should have planned for this. Now it would look suspicious when they left after Soleti because they would not see the couple leave until they were at the door. Protesting the placement of their table would draw even more attention, so Joy said nothing.

Just after midnight, Soleti and his lover waved and blew kisses to the maitre d' as they left. Both of them were drunk and touched each other as if they were the last two people left in the world. Joy made the almost imperceptible sign, and Old Boy stood without turning.

"I'd better pay the bill, then," he said.

Five minutes later, Joy knelt in the dark alley a block from the restaurant and sent the message on her radio that it was Fear's turn to act.

* * *

Fear scaled the outside of the apartment building bare-handed and waited. He watched the misty-eyed couple stumble through the door. Then he saw Joy and Old Boy appear at the side of the building in dark camouflage. _Almost time,_ he thought with a wicked grin.

Joy was not pleased with their night camouflage. It was more suited to fields and forests than the urban settings of modern wars. She would have designed her own, but she could not morally give the Germans that much help. Fear threw the ropes he had carried down the wall for the other two to climb. Joy pulled herself up the wall as quickly as she could and held out her hand at the top for Old Boy.

"You don't have to help me, Lieutenant," he said.

"I want to."

"You really - ," Old Boy began before his feet slipped.

Joy caught his wrist while he held tight to the rope with his other hand.

"The way you had your feet against the wall," she said with a warm smile, "I knew you would slip."

When they were all safely on the roof, Fear said, "I go down first and open the window. You follow me."

He climbed over the parapet and disappeared. Joy and Old Boy repositioned their ropes and followed. All three landed catlike in the modest kitchen of a two-bedroom apartment.

The lovers spoke Italian softly in the adjacent room. Fear crept ahead to the door and pushed it open easily. He darted forward like a snake's tongue, leapt onto the bed, snatched the woman by the throat and landed in front of the window on the other side of the room. His tongue flicked against the woman's cheek while she screamed in Italian.

"Anita!" Soleti cried, reaching toward her.

Fear swept his crossbow up so that it pointed at Soleti's chest.

"Come no closer," Fear said in English.

Soleti froze.

"Ferdi!" Anita screamed. "Let him take me if he wants. Run away!"

Fear did not understand most of what she said, but he understood when she bit him – hard – on the arm. Fear's entire face twisted. He seized a tangle of her loose hair and hurled her to the floor.

Soleti rushed toward him but stopped when Fear pushed his lover's head forward and jammed the crossbow against the back of the woman's neck.

"Don't you move, _Ferdi_, or I'll put a bolt right through her," Fear hissed.

Anita looked up at Soleti through the cascade of hair that covered her naked body. Then her eyes flicked past him to where Joy and Old Boy stood against the wall.

"Ferdi! There's someone behind you!" she cried.

"She saw us, Friedrich!" Old Boy shouted. "Kill her!"

"No!" Joy yelled, running to the center of the room.

Fear, Old Boy, and Soleti stared at her. Anita whimpered a Catholic prayer.

"We need him to cooperate with us. Leave her alive," Joy said.

Soleti stood, laughing tartly.

"Germans!" he spat. "What's to say I would cooperate with _you_?"

"Shoot her!" Old Boy shouted.

Fear released the woman's hair, and as she scrambled away, he shot her in the leg. Her eyes rolled as she shrieked in agony. Soleti approached her, but she raised her arms and scrambled away.

"A powerful poison with hallucinogenic properties," the Fear purred. "If you get dressed and go with my friends, I'll let her live. You have two minutes to decide. The longer you wait, the more she suffers."

"Your uniform, if you please," Joy said, tossing Soleti his uniform.

After the Italian had dressed, he, Joy, and Old Boy left Fear with the woman and went to meet Skorzeny.

* * *

Ferdinando Soleti marched silently between his captors as they entered the base later that morning. The other Cobras stood with the men of Unit Friedenthal in two lines.

Skorzeny addressed the soldiers, his usually cheerful face now stern and tense.

"We depart in half an hour," he barked. "I trust you are all prepared."

He stopped in front of the Fury.

"Konrad," he said, "I need you to come with my guest and I."

Fury saluted and followed Skorzeny.

"Men!" Skorzeny shouted. "You are dismissed to your preparations."

He took Soleti's arm and nodded to Joy and Old Boy who saluted before turning to join the rest of the soldiers. Sorrow ran to Joy and threw his arms around her. Then he recovered and saluted smartly with a sad smile gracing his lips.

"Glad to see you back, Frieda," he said. "The plane is all ready for - ."

"Michael, please give me a moment with Old Boy. I'll meet you over there."

Sorrow's hint of a smile disappeared, and he nodded. "Yes, sir!"

"Must be nice for you," Old Boy said after Sorrow had left. "A husband who salutes and calls you 'sir'."

"I didn't hold you here to talk about my personal life," Joy said curtly. "We may be of the same rank, but that was _my_ mission in Rome. You had no business giving orders like that."

"How was it _your_ mission?" Old Boy shouted like a schoolboy playing Red Rover.

"I planned it."

"Skorzeny planned it."

Joy exhaled slowly. Skorzeny had specifically mentioned that the mission was Joy's idea when they left for Rome, but it was not worth arguing, she told herself.

"That doesn't matter," she said.

"So you're saying it wasn't your mission?"

"At the time, I was in command," she snarled. "You gave an order to kill Soleti's mistress, even after I had told you once that it was not part of - ."

"She saw us!"

"You will learn to hold your tongue!" Joy yelled. If she had been the Fear, her eyes would be turning red. "You almost cost us an ally, but thank _God_ my unit is trained better than that! Fear - ."

As the words spilled from her mouth, she realized what they meant. She had let her anger speak for her.

Old Boy gaped, his wide eyes childish in his long face. He nodded and walked away without a word. She had blown their cover. Good _God_, she had blown it. They would be killed. Skorzeny would figure out who was in her unit, and all of them would be killed. If he waited until they returned to Germany, they might suffer the special punishment reserved for spies and be hung up on meat hooks.

Escape would mean failing the mission, but perhaps there was a way to get her unit away without her. She pushed the gruesome image of their mangled bodies from her mind and focused on finishing the day's mission.

* * *

Historical Notes

The term "pheromone" was not used until 1959, but since much of the early research on sex hormones was being done at the time of this story by Adolf Butenandt, a member of the Nazi Party, I thought it would be okay to use the term.

Otto Skorzeny actually had his honeymoon in Italy.

Skorzeny really did kidnap Ferdinando Soleti, a General of the Italian military police. This kidnapping went a long way in the bloodless raid on Gran Sasso.

The Allied invasion of Italy really was underway by this time, but it would be nine months before they entered Rome (just two days before Operation Overlord commenced in Normandy). I've skewed history a bit (again) for the sake of story. The Italian running this restaurant is taking a SERIOUS chance by doing what he's doing, but it made for a fun scene.

Soleti's mistress is an entirely fictional character. I haven't found a lot of information on the man, so I figured he was fair game. Please don't haunt me, sir!

I'm sure anyone who has taken history classes knows that the Nazis really did kill some people by putting meat hooks through them. It has always stuck with me as a particularly nasty way to die, which is why I used it.


	18. Operation Oak

Chapter 18: Operation Oak

* * *

Fear clamped his teeth onto his tongue as the DFS230 glider he shared with nine other men broke free from its transport aircraft. His hairy knuckles were whiter than usual as he gripped the bars on either side of his seat.

"Calm down, Fritz," Pain muttered behind him. "It will only hurt a little."

"Thanks," Fear grunted.

Theirs was the third glider in a line that crossed the sky like a beaded necklace. Fear watched the glider ahead of them dip down toward the base of the slope as it approached the red brick building that was Campo Imperatore.

Lower down the mountain, a group of Italians guarded a blockade. The End watched them from a low precipice, his rifle ready if they spotted him. The Italians smiled and joked and leaned on their rifles like soldiers do when there is no immediate danger. One saw the gliders coming nearer and pointed. Another man grabbed a radio, but before he could finish lifting the mouthpiece, he fainted into the road with a tranquilizer dart in his shoulder blade.

"Brace yourself for a rough landing," the glider pilot said calmly.

Fear closed his eyes and loosened his body. He felt Pain's gigantic hand press his shoulder as the wind near the ground tossed the glider. With a thump, they hit the ground, and a ripping sound tore past his ears. Fear tumbled forward, his limbs tangled like a spider's legs after it dies. Finally the glider crashed to a stop, and Fear snapped his limbs back into place.

"Everyone okay?" the pilot asked, climbing out of the cockpit.

Skorzeny marched down the rocky slope with his hand firmly around Soleti's arm. The Italian looked irritable but unharmed.

"Bruno!" Skorzeny shouted. "Are you hurt?"

Fear turned to his comrade and saw that his right arm hung limp and twisted.

"I'm fine!" Pain answered. "Never felt better!"

"Your arm broken?"

"Maybe, but it's not like I need it."

Skorzeny shrugged. "If you're alright, get down here and clear the way for us."

* * *

Given the option of ambushing the guards at the blockade, Fury took it. Nothing like a good ambush. The End watched him intently as he charged up the hill toward the Italians with a flamethrower on his back. Joy had told the End to shoot Fury if he did anything stupid, so he monitored his comrade's progress through his sight.

"Grandpa! Watch out!" The End's parrot landed on his brush-covered shoulder.

He turned his rifle back to the Italians. One tried to revive the man the End had already knocked out while the rest scanned the crags for the person who had fired the dart.

"Down there!" the End saw a man mouth. He pointed down the road at Fury and the Germans.

Fury dashed ahead, wielding the flamethrower like a toy. He dodged gunfire from both sides as the End put one man after another to sleep. Fury stumbled once as a bullet tore a hole in his pants, but he reached the blockade where he torched first the radio, then the vehicles. The remaining Italians surrendered as the Germans overwhelmed them, and then the End saw Fury fall, clutching his shoulder. Blood ran between his fingers. All the End could hear from his position were the echoes of gunshots and vague voices, but from the look on Fury's face, he was screaming. The End shot a tranquilizer dart into his comrade's arm and the Fury slept.

* * *

"Preparing to circle the target," Joy called to Sorrow who sat in the back seat of the Storch light aircraft she was flying. "How are the others doing?"

"Fury and the End seem to have overcome the – I think Fury's hurt."

"His own fault. I'm sure he ran in there like a hero."

Joy dipped the plane to one side and turned toward Campo Imperatore. Through her window, she saw the Pain talking with Skorzeny on the slope outside the main building. Even from a distance, the two enormous men were easy to spot. She hoped they had the intelligence to stay down once they were in sight of the hotel.

"Oh, Joy! This is not good!"

"What?" Joy asked, but Sorrow did not hear. One moment, he was staring through binoculars at an Italian machine gunner on top of the hotel. Then the black fog covered everything again, and he stood before a clean-shaven old man with mischievous brown eyes in a tough face.

"You must be the Sorrow," the man said in a low and reedy voice.

"This is not a good time." Sorrow tried to concentrate on returning to the world of the living, but that man's voice distracted him. It was familiar, a little lower but still so similar to Joy's voice.

"I know the timing is bad, but we don't choose when we die, Sorrow. Part of me just wanted to see if you really had the powers she wrote about."

The man smiled sadly in the way Joy sometimes did when Sorrow saw her alone.

"Sorrow! What the hell's wrong with you?" Joy's voice floated from far away. Her father looked around as if he would see her with them in the darkness.

"Sorrow, we have serious problems!" Joy yelled as she faded back into focus. Sorrow was sitting in the Storch again. Bullets cut the air around the tiny aircraft as Joy tried to dip and turn.

"Joy! Something just –."

"I don't care right now. The gunner almost saw Pain coming down the hill, but I'm distracting him now. The plane's too heavy to maneuver. One of us has to bail out, or we'll get hit. God, I wish we had guns on here!"

Sorrow heard Joy's father's voice, clear above the gunfire. "Tell her that you'll drop her on the roof and take the controls."

_I cannot - ._

"No, but I can."

If Sorrow could have seen the man as he spoke, he imagined the man's eyes would have gleamed the way Joy's did when she struck upon a particularly clever plan.

"Joy, I will take the controls," Sorrow said.

She laughed bitterly. "It's really no time for jokes."

"Let me try," Joy's father said, and Sorrow allowed him to take over his voice.

"I'm not joking, Bitty," Joy's father said. "I will fly low, and you will jump onto the roof."

Joy stiffened at the sound of her childhood nickname. "That's downright suicidal!"

"Not for you. You've done this before. At Wright Field."

"I-I understand, Sorrow," she whispered. "Take over for me."

She squeezed out of the cockpit and let Sorrow take her seat. As Sorrow brought the plane low over the brick building, Joy climbed over the side, ready to jump. The engine slowed. She would have less than a second to do this safely.

The machine gunner turned toward them, and Sorrow flew low over his head. Joy glanced back at the cockpit for a moment before she threw herself out onto the roof. The landing was hard, but nothing was broken. Joy flung her leg under the machine gunner who buckled and fell to his knees. Before the man could recover, Joy slammed the side of her hand into his temple. As the man collapsed, she hoped for Sorrow's sake that he was unconscious and not dying.

* * *

Several minutes earlier, Skorzeny was organizing the occupants of the first three gliders. Besides Pain's broken arm, there were only minor injuries.

"Our group will go first," Skorzeny was saying. "Those in the other gliders will surround the place after we're in. Bruno is an imposing figure, so he will go in front with us."

The group fanned out and marched down the slope toward Campo Imperatore. The gliders had come in silently, and the Italians seemed entirely unaware that an invasion was imminent. A hundred yards from the brick building, they heard a string of echoing bangs as bullets hit the rocks just ahead. Then Fear looked into the sky as he heard the engine of the tiny Storch overhead. The plane flew toward the hotel and then circled.

"What the _hell_ is she doing?" Skorzeny shouted.

"Distracting them, sir," Pain said simply.

"Oh, damn her to hell! If she gets shot down, we may not get Mussolini out of here. Impulsive woman…"

"Sir," said Fear, "I mean no disrespect, but she's giving us a chance to get in. I suggest we run like hell."

Skorzeny and his commandos tore across the last hundred yards to the brick building where Benito Mussolini stood waving on a balcony. Three Italians guarded the doorway with rifles raised. Skorzeny shoved Ferdinando Soleti in front.

"Don't shoot!" Soleti cried.

The men lowered their rifles for a moment, then raised them again. Suddenly, they were surrounded by a swarm of bees. While the guards ducked and swatted, Skorzeny dragged Soleti inside.

Fear glanced up at Mussolini and grinned. A look of revulsion crossed the former dictator's face, and he stepped back against the railing. Fear cackled inside. This man looked like a lot of fun. Fear stepped out of Mussolini's view and climbed like a lizard to the roof. He saw the machine gunner sprawled beside his gun. Sorrow must have shot him from the plane or something.

Fear slinked along the parapet until he was looking down on Mussolini's bald head. From here, the Fear could drop down onto Il Duce's shoulders like a gigantic version of a spider falling from the ceiling. He lifted one long leg over the parapet.

An arm clamped around his neck, and he was knocked back onto the roof. Fear clawed at his attacker who caught both of his wrists and landed a knee in his chest. He blinked and saw the Joy's livid face through his blurred vision.

"What in the hell are you doing up here?" she shouted. "Give me a good answer or I'll throw you over the side."

Fear smiled weakly. "I could ask the same question of you."

"I'm not going to play that game, Fear. Answer me."

She bent his wrists back.

"Ow! It… I came up here to get the gunner. Yeouch! I – I thought it would help and – aargh! Okay, fine. I wasn't going to hurt him or anything. I just wanted to have a little fun."

Joy dropped his wrists and stood.

"Get up," she said calmly.

Fear shuffled to his feet. Joy stared at him for a while with such an expression of despair that Fear could think of nothing clever to say.

"You have disappointed me," Joy began. "Just this morning… this… morning… I was saying how proud I was of you last night and… I must have gotten carried away because I… I…"

She turned quickly and opened the tiny door that led into the hotel. "Let's find Skorzeny."

* * *

"Don't shoot!" Soleti shouted to everyone they met inside. "I beg you not to shoot!"

Confused Italians dropped their weapons which were then picked up by their German assailants. Skorzeny found the radio operator immediately. He pulled the young man away from the equipment and crushed it with the butt of his rifle. The bees followed Pain into the building. He guided them covertly by tossing tiny vials of the pheromones he had shown Fear and then attracting them back before they could kill anyone.

Skorzeny, Soleti, and Old Boy met Joy on the stairs to the second floor.

"Frieda!" Skorzeny cried. "Did the Storch go down?"

"I had to take care of something, Captain. My husband is flying." She saluted. "Il Duce is through here."

Soleti ordered the last of the guards to drop their pistols, and Skorzeny embraced the man he had come to rescue.

"Duce," Skorzeny said, holding the much shorter man's shoulders, "the Fuhrer has sent me to set you free."

Mussolini smiled triumphantly. "I knew that my friend would not forsake me!" He clapped one arm around Skorzeny and the other around Soleti, who spat sourly at his feet.

Skorzeny's men cheered as their commander marched Mussolini down the stairs. Joy smiled, but deep in her mind, she was horrified. Here she stood in a Luftwaffe uniform freeing a man the Allies would have executed in a few days. The bitterness of the entire mission stung her again as it had in Marquise. What would her father think? Her father. Joy's mouth went dry, and her smile disappeared.

"Lieutenant!" Old Boy whispered in her ear. "One of _your _men was injured."

She pushed the thoughts of her father away as two of the men who attacked the blockade brought Fury into the hotel.  
"Shit!" Fury moaned. "God _damn_! It was a fucking hollow-point, Joy, uh, Frieda."

Blood covered the right side of his uniform, and no one had done anything to stop the bleeding.

"I'll take care of him," Joy said as the men laid a cursing Fury on a table.

Skorzeny laid a hand on her shoulder. "Frieda, I'll need you to fly us out of here. Leave him to someone else."

"Fine. Anyone here know anything about medicine?"

"I do," Old Boy said without hesitation.

Joy gazed at him, and he smirked.

"Good," she said, and she left with Skorzeny.

Sorrow had landed at the end of what was established during planning as a good runway. It was more like a slightly flatter strip of rock than the others on the mountain. Joy reached up to help Sorrow out of the cockpit, and when their hands touched, the world burst into cold white light.

* * *

Historical Notes:

The tranquilizer darts described in the story are not historically accurate in the least. In fact, they don't even exist in the way they're portrayed today! This is something from the _Metal Gear_ universe that is serious wishful thinking, but since this is fan fiction, I can use them.

Most of my account of the ambush at Gran Sasso, except for a few things I will mention later in the notes, is fiction. I read several accounts from different points of view, but in the end, I decided to make up my own. Please pick up the book _My Commando Operations: The Memoirs of Hitler's Most Daring Commando_ written by Otto Skorzeny himself. It has the man's own account of what happened, probably rather embellished.

Believe it or not, flamethrowers, while not practical, were used occasionally during World War II.

The real aircraft that came to pick Mussolini up was a Fieseler Fi 156 Storch (or Stork) flown by Captain Walter Gerlach. The Joy has taken his place in this story. It was only meant to hold the pilot and one passenger.

All accounts of the raid say that Skorzeny crushed the radio with his rifle.

The words spoken between Mussolini and Skorzeny are from Skorzeny's account of the raid.

Hollow-point bullets were outlawed for use in war in the first Hague Conventions, signed in 1899. Use of expanding bullets is a war crime.


	19. Spirit of the Warrior

Chapter 19: Spirit of the Warrior

* * *

The flash was momentary, like the light you see when you hit your head, and it brought with it that same disorientation. She was in a place full of warm, wooden colors. Shapes formed from the brown and rich butter yellow – a dark-stained desk and a book held in front of her eyes. Beyond that, a bookcase covered one wall, out of focus. She tried to shift her focus, but nothing happened. Then a deep sigh filled her ears and mind. The book was lowered, and her eyes moved to a tall grandfather clock with a moon and star at the ends of the hands. She knew that clock, and now she knew the room as her father's study at their house near Kitty Hawk. He had moved there in 1938, after he retired as a pilot, so that he could live where it all began, as he said.

His eyes, which Joy realized were also hers, moved over the room in a strangely nostalgic way. They seemed to note the hour and then roam to the model of the Wright Brothers' plane that hung from the ceiling, then over the many shelves of books so neatly organized, and finally to two pictures on his desk – one of Joy herself looking imposing in a British Army uniform and the other of the Wisemen's Committee in 1929, the year before Joy's mother died. The photograph was yellowed and fuzzy, but Joy knew it was a picture of nine men, one woman, and herself as a seven-year-old girl. She knew the names of all of the people in the picture, had even played with some of their children. All of them were dead.

Joy heard the doorbell ring through the house, and her father looked at the clock again. The doorbell rang again and again, but her father did not move. The person at the door pounded on the wood for a moment. Then there was a shout and a crash as the stained glass in the door shattered.

Footsteps thumped up the stairs and approached the study door. Joy's father folded his hands neatly on the desk in front of him. The man in the hallway tried the door and, finding it locked, shouted, "If you knew I was coming, you could have run."

Her father did not answer.

"You hear me, James?"

Joy recognized the voice's high-pitched arrogance and English accent, the cold sarcasm he had used with her, but she could not quite remember who it was.

The man banged on the study door until a second, very Russian voice murmured, "Allow me."

There was another thunderous crash as the door flew open. Two men in black clothing and balaclavas stalked into the room. Joy's viewpoint rose as her father stood.

"Good evening, gentlemen," he said with every bit of charm and serenity Joy remembered.

The man with the high-pitched voice, a small, thin man, said, "You didn't run, so you must have expected me to negotiate."

"Not at all, Jonathan. You can take off the masks. We're all friends here."

Jonathan Thomas pulled his balaclava over his head and nodded to his partner to do the same. His wiry hair stood on end from the static, and Joy would have laughed in any other situation. The other man, tall and broad-shouldered, revealed his face. Despite the scars that forked down the young man's face like lightning, Joy recognized him as Yevgeny Volgin, a boy only a few years older than her and always a bully. She had not seen him since he was struck by lightning at the age of thirteen. The rest of the Philosophers' children felt terrible for hating him when they heard the news, but Joy nurtured a deep hatred for Yevgeny, especially after she learned from her father that the boy now controlled much of the Philosophers' money.

"Yevgeny Borisovich Volgin," Joy's father said. "Seems you learned your father's penchant for dramatic betrayals."

"You should not speak of the dead," Yevgeny said. "It's bad luck, especially when you are the killer."

"I have all the bad luck I need, it seems."

"You had him poisoned, you… American dog!"

"Did I? I wonder who would tell you such a thing." Joy's father glanced at Thomas.

"Make no mistake, James. Nothing you say here will save her," Thomas said.

"You underestimate my daughter."

"Do I? I know that, right now, she and that little Cobra Unit you funded are on an assignment in Italy, working with the Nazis. _I_ gave them that mission, James. You see, times are changing. War is changing. The next world war will be fought not in the trenches but with secrets and spies. She should be perfectly suited for that."

"You can't control her, Jonathan."

"Of course I can! She's working with the Nazi commandoes now. She'll do whatever the Philosophers ask of her. If we tell her to fly a kamikaze mission against the Japanese, she will do it without question. Face it, James. Your daughter is doomed to a fate worse than death. She is damned."

Her father picked up the picture of the Wiseman's Committee from the table and said, very quietly, "You underestimate her."

Then both Yevgeny and Thomas drew their pistols and fired. The first bullet shattered the glass frame which held the photograph as the last of the Wiseman's Committee fell.

_The room darkened as if a curtain had been drawn, and Joy saw a dark-haired woman leaning up to kiss her as she sat in the cockpit of a biplane. Then the same woman held a tiny baby in her arms. A fair-haired girl stood on a piano bench in a white dress. The girl, only eight years old and wearing a black dress, knelt in front of a closed coffin. She held her father's hand as they wandered through a museum in Washington, D.C. She ran laughing though the waves on the beach at Kitty Hawk, pulling a kite through the air. Then the girl was in the parlor of their apartment in New York, listening as Wang Jingwei, the Philosophers' only supporter of the new Nazi regime, addressed the room. A teenager with long hair in golden waves read in a window seat. She was climbing into the cockpit for the first time, her hair cropped to her chin. Joy saw herself leaving for England then returning. She was running across the tarmac into her father's arms. Then there was that final image, through tear-filled eyes, of Joy smiling in an Army uniform. And even that faded._

"_No matter what you saw or heard," she heard her father's voice say in the darkness, "the spirit of the warrior will always be with you."_

Her eyes opened, and Sorrow stared back, pale eyes wide. They realized it had all happened in a moment as Skorzeny asked, "Is everything alright?"

"Yes," Joy answered, climbing into her seat. "I was just calculating the speed for takeoff."

"Well calculate for one more," Skorzeny said, squeezing himself into the cargo area.

"I wouldn't recommend that, sir."

"You'll just have to make it work. Imagine my embarrassment if Il Duce were to die in a plane crash, and I had to return to Germany empty-handed. Now get us out of here before the Italian army arrives to shoot us down!"

Joy nodded solemnly. Normally, she would have laughed at a hulking man such as Skorzeny crouched uncomfortably with his chin on his knees, but the tiny aircraft was only meant to carry two. She had seen the runway from the air, and Skorzeny's aerial photographs had not shown how deep that ravine was at the end.

The soldiers cheered as she started the engine. Sorrow looked at her anxiously from the ground, and Joy forced a reassuring smile. The propeller spun and whirred as she positioned the Storch at the end of the runway.

"For what little good it will do, hold on," she called to her passengers.

They sped along the narrow runway, bumping and bouncing over rocks. Their speed as increasing steadily, almost 40 knots now, and then the plane lurched down and up again.

"What was that?" Mussolini asked.

"Nothing. We have plenty of runway."

It was a ditch, invisible from the air, and they had been going too fast to avoid it. The speed decreased dramatically, and the engine sputtered. She lowered the nose to decrease resistance, but there would not be enough runway. The engine purred again, and they were at 55 knots, usually plenty to get into the air, but with another passenger, they would need more speed.

The precipice loomed ahead, showing a view of the mountains that would have been breathtaking if they weren't about to careen over a cliff at 55 knots. The ground dropped sharply, and for a moment, the little plane was airborne. Then they dropped.

"Can't you do something?" Mussolini asked as Skorzeny switched from a triumphant shout to a string of curses.

They were losing altitude rapidly, and it would be so easy for Joy to send them into a dive. She may die, but she would take a dictator and a Nazi with her… and she would be with her father. Sorrow had shown her a life after death, but did she believe it yet? She imagined her father welcoming her into that dark world as he had always welcomed her back to America. Death meant failing her mission and her unit. Who would save them when Old Boy inevitably revealed the truth?

Joy straightened the plane and sighed.

"We're out," she said.

"Frieda, if I weren't huddled in the cargo hold, I'd kiss you," Skorzeny shouted.

As Joy circled a snow-covered mountain and saw the yellowing autumn in the valleys, she appreciated being in Italy for the first time.

* * *

Historical Notes:

The Kitty Hawk reference, for those who might not have learned that part of history in school, is to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where Orville and Wilbur Wright first flew their heavier-than-air craft that would go on to be called the "airplane". Their first flight was on the beach at Kitty Hawk, but they originally lived and worked near Dayton, Ohio.

Wang Jingwei was a real person, a prominent figure in the wars that took place in China before and during World War II. He was anti-Communist and pro-German-Chinese cooperation. In the Metal Gear timeline that I've created, he died during the assassination attempt that almost took his life in 1938. In reality, he did not die from his injuries until 1944.


	20. Trösten

Chapter 20: Trösten

* * *

Sorrow wandered the German base outside of Rome searching for Joy. He had seen Mussolini and Skorzeny leave for Vienna, but Joy was not there to see them off. None of the Cobras except Fear had seen her arrive. Fear only knew that Joy had bid Skorzeny a brief farewell and left the runway. Sorrow approached the control tower that the Allies would soon destroy. It was inevitable that they would take Rome.

"You looking for your wife?" Old Boy asked from behind him.

"Have you seen her?"  
"Fifteen minutes ago, over there." He waved his hand at a line of canvas-sided trucks.

"Did she say anything?"

"I didn't try talking. She looked like she'd break my neck if I did. Be careful."

"I'll keep that in mind."

Sorrow crept toward the trucks. Stealth was the only battlefield skill he naturally possessed, and he slid silently from truck to truck, lifting the cover on each. When he found the one he wanted, he did not even need to check to know she was inside. Though it was a soft and quiet sound, he could hear her crying. He almost walked away, but then he imagined her sitting in the dark on a pile of empty crates. That was no way to mourn. He lifted the edge of the canvas and climbed into the truck.

"Who's there?" Joy cried in the darkness.

"The Sorrow."

"Exactly what I need right now," she quipped humorlessly.

"You gave me this name."

"Tonight, I will use your real name. Michael, wasn't it?"

"Mikhail."

"Right, and the nickname for that is 'Misha'."

The name stung. His sister had called him "Misha".

"That is correct." He could let the grieving woman call him what she wanted, even when it hurt.

Sorrow's eyes adjusted to the dark green glow inside the truck. Joy's skin was ghastly in that light, and her eyes were black holes. Sorrow shivered.

"Hold my hand, Misha," Joy said.

"Are you not scared I will…" Sorrow was trying to speak English, but he could not think of a word in any language to describe his power. "I will… I will show again… your father?"

Joy smiled, and he could see her eyes now, so much bluer from the tears.

"I might like it if you did," she said.

"It… I cannot…"

She grasped his hand and held it with her eyes shut tightly.

"Joy, it does not work that way. I do not know why I can sometimes see… things, but I know he is gone."

Joy looked up at him, her eyes tearful again, pleading.

"He has left me, Joy."

"What about the experiments the Nazis did? You could reach anyone."

"And it was horrible! You do not understand what it is to disturb the dead. Enough come to me, begging, but those who sleep… they do not want to wake."

"Surely he wants to talk to me. I was his last thought!" She threw herself onto Sorrow.

Some of her hair had fallen over her bandanna, and he tucked it in.

"I do not understand it myself, but I know what you feel. My sister died last month."

"Marina?" Joy asked, raising her head suddenly.

"You knew her?"

"When I brought you into my unit, I tracked her down and sent her a letter. I told her that you were safe and working for the Patriotic cause."

He had wondered how Marina knew where he was, and now that he knew, he was filled with overwhelming love for this woman in front of him. He took her other hand. It was covered in scars and calluses that would only increase as she aged and fought. Part of him wanted to hold those hands forever, do the fighting for them, but she was _voyevoda_. Her purpose was to go to war, and although even he could not see the future, he was certain she would die in battle.

Sorrow felt tears sting his eyes. Joy caught one on her finger as it ran down his cheek and smiled.

"Misha, you were spectacular today." She pulled his face close to hers until their eyes were inches from one another's, so blue and glistening with unshed tears. Joy leaned closer and kissed him, her warm lips on his icy ones. After a moment, she pulled away, the smile still on her face. Her taste, salted by their shared tears, lingered on his lips.

"You've never been kissed before," she said.

"No."

"You lost all those years, and I'll bet the Nazis never kissed you good night."

She kissed him again, so forcefully that both of them fell to the floor of the truck. This time, Sorrow let his lips move with hers, and when she sat up, they both laughed.

"You probably need to practice," she said.

"I shall." He pulled her on top of him again.

They laughed and kissed and a few tears fell between them, and then Joy was undoing the silver buttons on his uniform. He did not stop her, even when she let the jacket fall open and slid a hand up his chest, surprised to find that is was warm. His body was so alive, but if she didn't get her unit away from the Nazis, it wouldn't be for long. He breathed quickly and shallowly.

"Are you scared of me, Misha?"

Sorrow grinned. "No," he said. "I am not scared."

He touched her face with his long fingers. "I am not scared when you are here."

He unbuttoned her dark green flight suit and pushed it down to her shoulders. Her scent – sweat and engine grease which reminded him vaguely of lemons – enveloped him. She kicked her boots across the truck and pulled her legs out of the trousers. Sorrow ran his hands down her bare legs and felt the prickle of hair where she hadn't shaved for several days. She lay back, and he kissed the scars on her stomach. How many were from the war? How many from her training? How many from a childhood of playing too much with the boys? Despite having seen some of her most intimate moments through the eyes of her parents, Sorrow knew so little about the life of this woman whose scars he was counting with kisses like a child counts the stars.

Sorrow felt his spectacles sliding down his nose as Joy removed them. He reached for the little silver frames but missed. Joy laughed and set them on a crate.

"You can still see me," she said.

Her face and body were in focus, but the pile of crates behind her merged into the darkness like the background in a photograph. With one hand, he found the knot on the back of her bandanna and pulled it, letting the strip of fabric flutter to the dusty floor. He kissed her where it had covered her forehead.

Outside, dusk crept over the German base as a nightjar trilled nearby.

Sorrow was naked, and Joy stroked his white chest, utterly unblemished, not even a mole. She had seen men naked, and she was unashamed of changing in front of them, but romance had no place on the battlefield. As she touched the places on his chest where she had seen the Nazis shoot him in her nightmares, Joy wondered if she would have treated any of her men this way had they come to comfort her.

_No,_ she thought. _Only the Sorrow._

He was the only Cobra who would search for her, and he knew why she had been crying. She looked down into his pale eyes, traced the creases his rare smile formed on his face. For an instant, she imagined those eyes blank, his glasses back on his nose but askew, shattered. Then she fought the image away and kissed him again.

* * *

Joy awoke in the coldest part of the night, when the moon was low again in its path across the sky. She moved Sorrow's arm draped across her naked body and shoved away the damp clothing he must have pulled over them earlier in the night. Joy felt fingers in her hair and reached for Sorrow's hand. He caught her wrist and turned her so that she could see his smile, so playful, filled with all of the joy her own name implied. They were together in the bitter night, as different from each other as the code names they used.

As the Joy lay beside him, quiet and still, Sorrow coveted the ability so many others long to have – visions of the future – but it was a vain and terrible hope. Even the visions his imagination created had started to fade his smile. If he could truly know what was to come, he would live in the future and miss the present.

"What was that thing you did with my… my father?" Joy asked.

"I do not know," Sorrow replied. He was not certain how the dead could take over his body, but now that it had happened twice, he was at least certain he could do it again.

"He's dead, isn't he? Gone?"

"It is not so simple. They are… there. We are here. Some want to stay here, so they speak to me. Others… leave."

"But you could find anyone, if you wanted?"

"Yes, but they will not always tell me what I want and… I cannot live forever in the world of the dead."  
"I would never ask that. I want you here, in this world. With me."

Sorrow shivered and threw a wet jacket over his shoulders. Joy pulled the jacket off and replaced it with her arms. Sometimes Marina had done that on cold fall nights when their parents took the surplus harvest to Saratov. He would sit outside their house to wait for them as the moon rose, and Marina would find him.

"Well," Joy said, "however you did it, thank you for letting me see my father."

He could not see her eyes, but he felt hot tears hit his back.

"And I must thank you too," he said.

"Why?"

"For telling Marina that I - ."

Joy held up a hand to silence him. The flap on another truck rustled.

_Wind?_ Sorrow mouthed, but Joy shook her head. Sorrow reached for his underwear, but Joy stopped his hand.

A beam of light hit the side of the truck and moved quickly to the back. The flap lifted, and someone climbed into the truck. The figure's flashlight beam blinded Sorrow for a moment, but then he saw Fear's long nose and angular chin.

"Boss!" Fear gasped.

She gazed at him without changing her expression.

"Yes, Fear."

"I have a message from the Philosophers."

"And that is?"

"We are to go with the Germans back to Berlin and stay there until further notice."

"I see," Joy said quietly. "I'm surprised they risked passing a message to us on a German base. Is that all?"

"Yes."

Sorrow put his glasses on again and watched his comrade look once at Sorrow, then once at Joy, and leave. Though Fear had looked calm, he was plainly livid.

"He scares you, doesn't he?" Joy asked after Fear was gone.

"_You _scare _him_."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"It's something he said back in Marquise."

"He threatened to hurt you if you touched me?" she laughed.

"Yes."

"The Fear threatens a lot of things, but he rarely does more than he has to. He won't hurt you." She took his hand. "Besides, I'll be here to protect you."

"I do not want protected, sir," he snapped. "We are soldiers together. You will treat me like the others. This will not happen again!"

Sorrow gathered his clothing and stood. Joy did not move. Tonight, thought the Sorrow, their fake marriage was real, and this… this was a lover's quarrel, and it was all somehow lovely and familiar, and he wanted so much to kiss her and make everything right in the world.

"Joy," he said, "are you afraid of anything?"

"Nothing," she replied. "I was afraid of one thing, and it happened today. It happened, and I lived. Being afraid does nothing but drag our minds away from the battles of the present."

But she was afraid – of ghosts of the past, specters of the future, and her own body which she had given so willingly to a comrade.

"Good night, Joy," Sorrow said, buttoning his jacket.

"Good night, Misha. Go on. I want to stay here just a little longer."

* * *

Historical Notes:

Nightjars are a type of nocturnal bird found throughout most of the world. The European nightjar is common in most of Europe during the summer and early fall.


	21. Secrets

Chapter 21: Secrets

* * *

The young man's golden eyes were shot with crimson like the sky at sunset as he watched the three camouflaged soldiers approach. The one in the back was tall and wore a hood over his face. The man in the middle stomped unceremoniously on twigs and dry leaves, making a racket that seemed to annoy the soldier in front. The lead soldier wore his blond hair to his shoulders, tied back at the nape of his neck. The two faces he could see were confident, almost cocky. They weren't scared. Oh, no, not scared yet. The young man in the tree aimed his crossbow at the front soldier's thigh. He could hit each man with a poison-tipped bolt, and they would live long enough to warn others not to enter the forest, _his_ forest.

The lead soldier's eyes flicked toward the young man lying along a tree limb, and as the bolt flew, the soldier dove for cover behind a tree. The bolt hit the second soldier above his ankle, and a second bolt missed the third soldier as he reacted to their leader's dodge.

"Shit!" the wounded soldier shouted, falling to the forest floor. "Shit! Oh, God dammit!"

He tried to stand.

"If you move, the next one goes straight through your heart," the man who would become the Fear cackled.  
"What do I do, Joy?" the Fury moaned.

"I'm thinking." The Fear was surprised to hear a woman's voice answer.

"You don't have much time, lady," he warned. "The poison I used on those arrows is potent. In only a minute, he will be screaming in agony. Would you like my advice?"

"Fuck your advice!" Fury roared. "Joy, just leave me here. I'll deal with this freak!"

Fury stood, and Fear aimed for his heart. A movement to the left caught his eye – Pain raising his pistol. He shot the Pain in the arm and leapt to another branch.

"Now, before your friends die, I suggest you take my advice," Fear called from his new hiding place. "All of you leave your packs, go back into town, and never come here again. Oh, and the lady stays here."

"You little… I'm going to – aargh!" Fury screamed, arching his back suddenly as pain tore through his body.

"Fine." Joy stepped into Fear's view. "Pain, you take Fury with you, and go back."

Seeing her standing between the trees as her comrades departed, Fear wondered how he had mistaken Joy for a man. She stared at him with eyes full of confidence, but she was now alone and unarmed. He lowered the crossbow.

"If you want our packs, you'll have to get them yourself," she called. "I can't climb up there like you."

"You'll have to learn if you're going to stay with me."

"I'm just as happy to go home." She turned.

Fear shot a bolt into the tree beside her. "You won't be leaving."

"Then I'll just sit here for a while."

"I'll kill you."

"Then I guess you'll be alone again."

She sat for an hour as the sun rose higher in the sky. A breeze lifted her hair every few minutes, and she smiled wanly at Fear. He circled her, leaping between the trees like a jungle cat. He would make this woman his, love her until he destroyed her. He licked his lips. They must be carrying food in those packs, and he had not eaten a true meal in weeks.

Fear dropped to the ground and approached the woman who simply smiled as she had for the past hour. He touched her arm and immediately felt her fist smash against his nose. Cartilage twisted, and blood splashed across his face. The woman grasped his shoulder and shoved him to the ground, then landed with her knee in his back and her hand tangled in his long, matted hair.

"Now I can give you some advice," she growled. "You can make up the time you lost for us by being our guide, or I can break your neck. I suggest the first option."

* * *

Revenge would be simple. Sorrow was like a child. He wouldn't even have to hurt him, just scare him enough to make him leave the unit. Perhaps spiders… or maybe he could be left in Italy somehow. Sorrow talked to dead people, right? So if he killed one of the Germans, told him something horrible before he died… Whatever happened, Sorrow would deserve it. He had warned him, hadn't he? And the other Cobras…

Fear grinned as he gazed across the German base. Why take revenge now, with such hot-blooded impatience? He would tell the Cobras when the moment was right.

* * *

"These are the heroes of the Reich!" an amplified voice cried over the din of the crowd.

A man with a camera paused on the Joy's face, and she shuddered. When the newsreels played, the world would see her, hailed as a Nazi hero in Berlin. The Philosophers had a plan, she reassured herself. Thomas was nothing compared to the true Philosophers, a simple assassin hired by Volgin. He had not given her the order to go to Italy, but he took credit for it to scare her father. Others knew she was here. Mark Astrus knew she was here.

Joy was appropriately reserved as Adolf Hitler himself saluted her. She glanced at the End on her left. He started to raise his hand to his face as if making the sign of the cross, but then he dropped his hand to his side. Sorrow shook on her right as an October wind howled through the crowded square. Skorzeny held his face sternly, but she could see a smile threatening to burst upon his lips.

When the ceremony was over, Joy walked back toward the hotel which was their new headquarters. Old Boy caught up with her.

"Frieda!" he panted. "You walk so fast."

"I have paperwork to do."

"This will only take a moment," he said, seizing her wrist.

"What do you want?" she sighed.

"To say good-bye. I have my own unit. Friedenthal was temporary." His eyes were so mild for once, almost sorrowful.

"You knew," she said. "You knew, and you didn't tell anyone."

"I-I was glad to serve with you, Lieutenant."

"Thank you, Lieutenant." She smiled.

He leaned close to her so that their lips almost touched, but at the last moment, he turned her face gently and kissed her cheek.

"Good luck, Frieda." He dropped her hand and departed.

Joy did not return to the hotel immediately. She had the impression that a man in a dark coat was following her. He had been merely a shade in the crowd at the ceremony, but while she and Old Boy were talking, she saw the man again, passing several yards away with his hat down. If she had to fight him, she did not want a crowd to see. She strolled into the darker parts of the city, where once-great buildings were rubble that spilled into the street.

Listening for footsteps, she paused for a moment and hoped she looked lost. There was no sound except for the distant crowd. The bombed portions of Berlin were as eerily silent as the desert.

"Good afternoon, Joy," said a voice in English. The man in the dark coat had appeared at her side silently as a lion. He twirled his silver mustache around one finger and laughed jovially.

"Astrus!"

He threw his arms around her waist and spun her like a child. His face darkened as the sky does before the rain.

"I have some terrible news."

"What?"

"Your father has been murdered in America."

She did not have to feign her reaction as the weight of his words crushed her smile. He had not merely died. He was _murdered_, targeted by men he had trusted.

"I fear all signs point to a German spy."

_No!_ Joy shouted in her mind, but though Astrus knew Sorrow could speak to the dead, she felt suddenly that he should not know the extent of Sorrow's powers.

"We are investigating, of course," he said. "I urge you not to take revenge yourself. Let the Philosophers take care of this. Until then, I will need your help. We will meet at a designated time twice per week, and you will relay to me every scrap of information you have."

"Yes, sir."

"And my dear Joy, don't misunderstand, but I need to know everything about the men in your unit as well. Not Unit Friedenthal. The Cobra Unit. Find out who they spoke to on the way to Stuttgart. Tell me about their secrets and fears and especially how they use their abilities."

"This is important to the Philosophers?"

"More than you know. Imagine ten Cobra Units, a hundred, even a thousand. Each man's powers could be honed when he is still a child. Super soldiers, Joy."

She stared at him in disgust. "You're sounding like Joseph Goebbels."

"Not at all. I'm offended you would say that."

"I've had quite enough of Nazi philosophy. When will we leave Berlin?"

"In time, Joy. This is your mission. Will you complete it?"

"Of course, Major."

"We will find the men who killed your father."

* * *

Sorrow met her with a light kiss when she returned to their room at the hotel.

"Where were you?" he asked, taking her coat.

"Visiting a friend."

Sorrow knew that was as much of an answer as she would give.

Joy laid a hand on each of Sorrow's shoulders and silently thanked Old Boy for letting them live. Sorrow was alive and she was alive and some part of her hated Old Boy anyway for betraying his country, and she wanted to express all of this passionately, physically. She pulled Sorrow toward her as if their bodies could merge. If she were dead, she could live in his mind, but only in this corporeal existence could she feel this intoxicating intimacy. Astrus would hear nothing of what the Sorrow did tonight.

* * *

"A child," Joy said stolidly a month later as she sat between the End and the Sorrow on the same bed in the same hotel room.

Sorrow knew what happened to women who got pregnant in war. They died in childbirth. They died, and their unborn children died with them. Battlefield medicine was a cruel judge. Still, if she lived, if the child lived… he would be a father.

"Please… please excuse me," Joy gasped.

She stood briskly, freeing herself from Sorrow's grip, and left without a look at either Sorrow or the End. Taking her coat from a hook on the wall, Sorrow followed her into the corridor.

"Don't," the End said.

"Why not? She needs a coat."

"You mean, '_They_ need a coat,'" the End said, lifting an eyebrow.

"Yes…"

"I know you want to play the father, but this woman is not your wife. Do you really think, if it came down to that, you could protect her… or your child?"

Sorrow's face flushed.

"You can't - ," he stammered, turning his back on the man he admired. "You don't know what I can do!"  
"Sorrow, I have been in love more times than you can count on your fingers. She is not a woman you can fall in love with. You will never have the happiness you want."

"You - ."

"The two of you pretended, and no matter how you are reacting, both of you knew what would happen."

The End paused until Sorrow nodded slowly, cautiously.

"You want to be afraid for her," the End continued. "But you and I know she is a woman who will choose her own death."

"You don't… have some sort of power?"

The End laughed, and his parrot, quiet until this moment, mimicked the sound.

"Not a psychic power! I only speak from the experiences of a long life, too long a life, perhaps. I have outlived children and grandchildren. Many have inherited the blood of the warrior from my line. I had a granddaughter who fought in the Sino-Japanese conflicts. She met a Chinese man, talked about marrying him, but when she saw him fall in battle, so her comrades said, she impaled herself on his bayonet, killing both her and her baby. It seems she did not want the child pulled from her dead body."

The End smiled pensively as the parrot repeated, "Her dead body," in the same mournful tone.

Sorrow sighed and laid Joy's coat on the bed. She could be anywhere in Berlin by now.

* * *

Joy tripped over a crack in the brick pavement but caught herself quickly.

_A moment,_ she thought. _I only need a moment, and then I'll be fine again._

A man in a black cape appeared in front of her so suddenly that they almost collided.

"My dear Joy!" Astrus cried. "Running through the city without a coat or anything."

"Why are you here?"

"No need to be so sour, my dear."

"Last week, Tuesday. You never showed."

"Things… have changed. It is utterly serendipitous that we have this chance to meet."

He threw his cape over her shoulders, but she stepped out of it.

"Our meeting means I didn't have to do the horrendously dangerous task of sending a messenger in to find you."

"Wonder how you would have done that."

"The sarcasm is unbefitting of an officer."

"Funny, Astrus. I don't remember ever being an officer. The Philosophers denied me that."

"And that is going to change, but first we need your help."

"I'm in no position to - ."

"Hang your position!" Astrus's kind eyes burned with such ferocity that even Joy could not say anything. "Do you think having our best special forces unit trapped in Germany is a comfortable position?"

"Trapped?"

Astrus sighed. "I do wish you didn't have to be involved in this, my dear, but with your father's death, we really have no choice."  
"How are we trapped?"

"Persistent. You aren't trapped. Your unit is. It seems one of the other Philosophers has let it slip that there is an Allied unit hiding among the Germans. The Gestapo is closing in. We can get you out of the country, but only you."

"But I'll be on a new mission."

"Correct."

"Without my unit."

"Yes."

"I can't just leave them here to be killed." She turned back toward the hotel.

"There's a German spy. In the United States."

Joy stopped, but she did not face Astrus.

"He is involved in a secret U.S. weapons program that even the Philosophers – well, he is in a sensitive position, so we need our best operative to assassinate him."

"Me."

"Naturally, Joy. At exactly thirteen minutes after two tonight, you will need to meet me here."

"And my unit."

"We are working out how to get them out of the Occupied territory. Trust that they will be safe."

"But I will not."

"Whatever do you mean by that?"

"This mission," she said, turning to face Astrus again, "is likely to be one-way. That's why you chose me."

_It's just as Thomas said,_ she thought.

"I get into… wherever. I assassinate the spy, and you have no plan for getting me out."

Astrus gazed at her from under his bushy silver eyebrows.

"We will get you out," he said finally.

* * *

At two o'clock, Joy leaned over the Sorrow, naked under the sheets. They had tried to make love that night, but he had felt so fragile beneath her. She wanted to kiss his closed eyes but could not risk waking him. His quiet snores rose and fell like they had the night before, like ocean waves lapping the sand. She took her small bag and closed the door silently behind her.

* * *

Historical Notes:

The participants in Operation Oak were honored after the mission in a ceremony in Berlin on October 13. This is when Skorzeny was promoted to Major (remember that I said that I had his rank wrong earlier in the story) and awarded the Knight's Cross. The real ceremony was indoors, but I set it outside. The inclusion of Operation Oak in this story in the first place started with a famous picture of this ceremony where a woman is standing with the troops. Then I realized that the timing fit, and I wrote this story around it.

One of the most famous Nazis, Joseph Goebbels was the Reich Minister of Propaganda for Nazi Germany.

The Second Sino-Japanese War (a war between China and Japan) took place from 1937 to 1945.


	22. Interrogations

Chapter 22: Interrogations

* * *

Closing his eyes did nothing against the glaring white light that filled the room where the Fear sat, chained into a hunch on a rigid wooden stool. A disembodied voice yelled from behind the light, "Where are you from, rat?"

"Ravensburg," Fear spat.

"You insult the Fatherland! You are no German! You have no homeland, Gypsy!"

The man slapped him, his garnet ring cutting the Fear across the cheek. The German was scared. His terror filled the room like musk. Fear licked the blood from his face.

* * *

One floor above, the Pain was pressed against a wall with a pistol aimed at the back of his head. They had tried to intimidate him by laying the cool metal on his neck, but when Pain could not feel it through his scars, one of the soldiers brandished the Mauser in his face then slammed him against the wall.

"Set him down!" shouted a voice from the other side of the room.

Though Pain made no effort to resist, the men who were holding him shoved him roughly into a chair.

"What's that buzzing?" said the voice, coming closer.

The speaker was a young man, probably no older than eighteen, who had, unlike many of the other members of Unit Friedenthal, shown Pain enormous respect from the day they met.

"Rolf," Pain said quietly.

"You will address me as 'sir'!"

"Rolf," Pain insisted. "You were not with me at Gran Sasso, so you may not know…"

"Bees, sir," one of the men holding Pain offered.

"And you…," said the boy, "keep these bees with you everywhere?"

"Some of them."

"Where are the rest?"

"You'll have to look for them."

"Tie him down."

Pain let the men bind him, glad he had started keeping the bees in his body rather than in the pack that was now squashed between his back and the chair. He felt them fluttering angrily in his throat.

"Now Bruno," Rolf said. "Please make this easy and tell me who you really are."

"I don't think you want to know."

"Trust me when I say that I would very much like to know why you and your… unit have been pretending to be German for the past three months."

Rolf took the poker out of the fireplace and held it near his own face.

"My methods will be crude, but they should give you a taste of what the Gestapo will do tomorrow. Take off his mask!"

Pain felt wings brushing the inside of his mouth as a soldier peeled the fabric mask away.

* * *

Skorzeny approached the Fury with thirteen other men. Four were unconscious before Fury was finally subdued. The hotel was not built to hold prisoners, but one room had been converted to a cell so that prisoners of war could be held overnight. This was where they took Fury.

"Fuck you!" he spat at one of the soldiers he had led to Gran Sasso.

Fury dangled by his arms from the ceiling. The Nazis, unprepared for this torture session, did not have weights to tie to his feet, so Fury was so far able to keep his shoulder joints in place.

The soldier touched Fury's face with the clawed end of a walking cane. "Posing as Gestapo." He scratched Fury under the chin as if he were a cat. "You'll be executed for sure. The question is, will you tell me who you are so that you can be shot tidily tonight, or will you resist and give the real Gestapo a chance to come up with something much nastier tomorrow?"

"I have nothing to tell, you Nazi piece of shit!"

The soldier rammed his cane into Fury's abdomen, just below his ribs. As he crumpled, Fury felt his shoulders strain. He gasped and straightened so that he could see the soldier's gray eyes.

"I am not a torturer. I can only do what Major Skorzeny allowed me, but that, I feel, should be enough. Tell me, Kurt. Do you know the old sniper?"

"Known him for three months."

"So it wouldn't matter to you what happened to him?"

"Think I give a shit about an old geezer?"

He heard Sorrow's words surface in his mind. The psychic runt had been willing to die for any of them. Fury grimaced. He couldn't let that little fuck be the better man.

"Wake him up!" the soldier ordered, and Fury discerned the shapes of two men and a table across the room. One of the men dumped a bucket of water on the table which moaned in the End's voice.

"What is your real name, Kurt?"

Shit. He didn't even know that, even if he had wanted to answer. Too many families, too many names, and Fury was his favorite so far.

"Konr - ."

The soldier whacked him across the cheek with the cane. "Douse the old man."

Fury could only see vague outlines in the shadows, but it was enough to know that one man had lifted the End by his bound ankles. The other man poured a bucket of water slowly over the old sniper's face until he gasped and gurgled and pulled at the manacles which held his wrists to the table. They were fucking drowning him! Fury tried to think of a way to stop it as the soldier shoved the end of the cane against his throat.

The soldier waved his hand for the men to stop. The End wheezed.

"It's a dry drowning, a technique used by the Spaniards in the fifteenth century. I am by no means a torturer, but when I heard of a method that left no visible scars, I had to bring it back to my own country. He's not going to talk yet. Do it again!"

Fury counted the seconds.

Ten.

Eleven.

Twelve.

And then the End inhaled painfully.

"_Gospodi pomilui_!"

Jesus Christ! The old man was praying, and in Russian too.

"I see," the soldier cooed, scratching his own chin with the cane.

* * *

When Skorzeny entered the hotel room at the end of the third floor, he found the Sorrow breathing heavily but conscious. The sickly thin man was chained to a chair, and the two men guarding him rose when they saw their commander.

"You have done nothing to him?" Skorzeny asked.

"No, sir."

"Good. Please leave me with him."

The guards stepped into the hallway, and Skorzeny knelt before the prisoner.

Sorrow lifted his eyes. "I do not know any more than I did yesterday. Treating me like a dog will not get you answers."

"Circumstances are different today, Michael. The rest of Frieda's unit has been arrested. While we talk, your comrades are being tortured.

Sorrow bowed his head.

"But you already knew that. Someone told you."

Sorrow tightened the muscles in his jaw. He would say nothing.

"One year ago, you were taken from a research facility in Poland."

Sorrow urged his body not to react.

"This woman – I know her name's not Frieda – and her unit slaughtered every man in the place except you."

He remembered the cries as they had died while he sat in the darkness. Alert klaxons echoed off of the cement walls as even the other prisoners were killed. The elation of freedom had overwhelmed the voices as Joy and her unit stood with him in that once-dark room, but in the days after, wails of resentment from those who were not rescued filled his mind.

"Do you think that was her mission, Michael?"

Sorrow held his body stiffly. He would not respond.

"She is a professional soldier. She could have gotten in, taken whatever paperwork she needed, and been on the road back to London without killing anyone. Maybe she killed one man, by accident, or perhaps tripped an alarm, but what drove her to massacre the whole lot was her own desire to do it. She loves killing, and you will never stop her."

A strange expression crossed Skorzeny's face. Was it dread? Embarrassment? Only the Fear could have read it that quickly.

"Tomorrow," Skorzeny said, "all of you will be tortured. You will be sent away for experimentation, and your comrades will be executed."

He sighed and laid a weary hand on Sorrow's shoulder. "You can save them. Join my unit, and I will have them taken out of the country."

* * *

Joy held the railing and leaned back, letting the ocean wind sweep through her hair. The chafing Luftwaffe uniform was gone, and she stood at the stern of the Queen Mary in plain olive fatigues. With the crisp November chill of the north Atlantic on her face, she was almost content. It was snowing in Berlin, she had read in the papers just as she left to board the ship at Southampton. The other Cobras would be rescued that night, and Joy wanted to believe that they would all be together in a month.

Site Y12, her target in the United States, was a laboratory on an arid mesa in New Mexico. A mathematician named John von Neumann, the German agent, would be visiting. He worked in the easternmost building.

Joy felt naked going in with little more than a picture of von Neumann and a vague idea of the facility's layout. For the past year, Sorrow had provided information down to how many men guarded the perimeter, and before that, the Fear was always able to look down from other buildings or trees. Occasionally, she had flown overhead herself to take aerial pictures, provided there was a suitable aircraft available. There would be no reconnaissance, no intelligence here. She heard someone approach and turned.

The stranger on the ship hid himself conspicuously under a hat and trench coat, but Joy could still see his round face and prominent ears.

"Prime Minister!" The man was Winston Churchill.

"Call me 'Colonel Warden'," he said, extending his hand.

She took it. "You are traveling to the States?"

"Making the hop over the puddle, yes. I must say that I'm terribly surprised to see you here, not that it's a terrible surprise."

"What do you mean?"

"The Cobra Unit has been missing since August. We presumed you were dead until someone spotted you in German uniform on a Nazi newsreel."

Joy stepped back. "You don't mean…"

"Oh, no," Churchill laughed. "I didn't really think it was you, but it seems you have a doppelganger in the Luftwaffe. Where have you been? Washington insisted that you never existed, but I would never forget such a beautiful soldier. Where did they hide you?"

"Minister, that was me. The woman in Germany was me."

"Surely that joke has run its course."

"No. I'm not joking. I was in Germany…" Then she remembered her briefing with Thomas and Astrus. "On your orders."

"Sending our best commandos in to play dress-up with the Nazis? It's perfectly preposterous!"

"That's what I s - ."

"So now you're going home on medical leave?"

She followed his gaze to her abdomen. She had grown in the week since she left Berlin, but Churchill was the first to notice.

"No," she said. "A mission."

"Whose?"

"The Philosophers'."

"No. The child. One of your men?"

Sorrow. Since leaving Berlin, she had thought of the Cobras as a unit, but now she replayed her silent farewell to the Sorrow in her mind.

"Somehow it seems strange," Churchill said. "A soldier like you, carrying the child of one of your subordinates, and in the middle of a conflict that may well leave the world permanently divided."

"It is my personal business."

"Nothing is personal in a war. I came up here to find you because my traveling companions informed me that you were on board. We have some… personal business to discuss."

"Absolutely, sir."

"But first," he groaned, lowing himself into a chair, "is there anything we can do to make your journey more pleasant?"

Joy smiled. "Make the deck lower so I can feel the sea."

"Ah, the impossible and the impractical. And how would you complete your mission while lying in a hospital bed with pneumonia?"

* * *

When Pain first awoke in the blackness, he thought that he had gone blind, that perhaps his captors, in an effort to make him feel anything beyond the constant burning of his skin, had cut out his eyes. His memory of the day was murky and disjointed, like fevered dreams. He listened for the sound of the bees he carried in his body, but they were silent, maybe dead. The only sound in the room was a rattling breath only a few feet away.

"Pain!" the End gasped.

The old man coughed, heaving painfully after every breath.

"How are you, old man?"

"It _is_ you," the End choked. "I thought I saw you when they brought me in."

"You two fucks are awake?" grumbled Fury from the other side of a wall that was invisible in the gloom. "I've done nothing but listen to you snore for the past two hours."

Pain heard a scraping sound along the wall and then Fury's cry of, "God damn!"

"You alright over there?"

"Do I sound like it? They dislodged my goddamn shoulders, and I'm not some sick freak like Fear who can get them back in on my own."  
The End coughed again, rasping like a dying engine.

"You okay, old man?" Pain asked.

"Hell no, he isn't! He got it worse than any of us until Skorzeny came in and made them stop."

The three men sat in silence for a minute, and Pain's eyes adjusted enough for him to see the End's hunched outline.

Fury was the first to speak again. "Wonder where the two little kooks are."

"Think they were killed?" Pain asked.

"No. They squealed. Sorrow hasn't been trained like we have, and Fear's a -."

A shout in the hallway interrupted.

"I don't care," the voice yelled in a comically girlish tone. "Get him out of here!"

Muffled high-pitched laughter reverberated through the walls, growing louder as someone opened the door. Dim light from the hallway assaulted their eyes as two men dragged a writhing, cackling form between them.

"I'll cover the other prisoner," a third man said, drawing his pistol as Fury's cell was opened.

With a crash of chains, the creatures was tossed in, and the Nazis left.

"Shit, Fear, get your ass off me!" Fury shouted.

"God, that was fun!" Fear panted, calming his laughter.

"What did you do?" Pain asked.

"The first man, I told him every step of decomposition of a human body, in detail. Second man, described how alkali burns right through the skin. Third man, threatened to rape his daughter with my tongue."

"You are a depraved little fuck!"

"Yeah, and I bet I could spring us all out of here if these chains weren't so tight. Could you help me for a moment, Fury?"

"I would, but my arms are fucking dislocated."

"I see now. I think I can fix that."

Pain heard a crack, a pop, and then a loud groan from Fury.

"One down," Fear said.

Crack. Pop. "Awww, shit!"

"All done. Now you help me. Take the piece of metal off my tongue."

"You bloody serious?"  
"It'th a thile."

"A what?"

"Do itth!"

"Fine. What the hell is it?"

"A file, you ass. It's to cut through the chains. If you can get my hands apart, I can get through the bars… I think."

Time passed with no meaning in the darkness as Fury rubbed the tiny file back and forth across the chains. Fear gleefully asked each of them about their torture. The End answered with only a grunt.

"Ahhh…," Fear sighed when one of the chain links finally broke. "Now my ankles."

"Do your own damn ankles!"

The door opened, but this time the hallway was dark too. A red light roamed toward them, a focused beam that fell acrros each of their faces. Fear put his face against the bars as the light moved closer. A long hand reached from behind the light and touched his nose. Fury recognized the hand, a female hand with long nails.

"What the hell?" Fury shouted. "Sabine!"  
"Shhhhh…," Sabine hissed.

"Who is that?" the End asked.

"It's fucking - ."

"Sabine DeMille," she said quietly, turning the light onto her face so that it looked like she was lit by hellfire. "I'm here to get you out of Berlin."

* * *

"Overlord," Joy repeated, letting the word fill her mouth.

"I know," Churchill said. "Not wholly appropriate, but we don't even want to drop a hint."

"Why are you telling me?"

"I have already requested the Cobra Unit for an operation that day. Of course, they told me you didn't exist, but now that you do…"

"The Philosophers approved this?"

Churchill looked at her with narrowed eyes.

"Not yet, but they will. Perhaps you should get some sleep. We can talk tomorrow."

Joy shook her head and looked past the railing to the ocean stretching blue and white back to England. "No. We can talk now."

Churchill began hesitantly. "What do you know about the German rocket programs?"

"Enough. We were on an Operation Bodyline mission to tamper with their A-4s last year."

"So you may know about the test launch they did at the end of October, where Goerring was present."

"I heard rustlings, yes. I was in Berlin."

Suddenly, she realized how much time they had wasted in Berlin. She had missed two months of the war. There were no intelligence briefings from the Philosophers. Her unit knew only what a German soldier would know – very little, and much of that peppered with Nazi propaganda.

"While you heard rustlings, I heard the imminent screams of thousands of Londoners who could be killed by this new flying bomb. They still seem to have a few design flaws, but it's likely they will deploy the rockets – they call them V2s now – along the Normandy coast just in time for the invasion. They could decimate our forces and the home front before we even reach the beachhead."

"And my unit?"

"Will begin destroying the installations as soon as their locations are determined."

Something to live for. Perhaps the Philosophers meant for her to survive this mission to assassinate von Neumann. Or perhaps they meant to see London destroyed.

"Commander Joy," Churchill said, taking her hand, "I'm not sure you will be in any condition to take the mission. Send your unit in without you."

_That may already be the plan,_ she thought sourly.

* * *

Historical Notes:

Ravensburg is a city in southern Germany.

I chose a crude and particularly brutal version of water boarding for the End's torture. It was not for any political reason but simply because I thought it made a good match with the particular Nazis I had created. I did go and research its history and made it much less controlled than it is when used today. It was originally used during the fifteenth century by the Spanish Inquisition, and there is no evidence of its use in Nazi Germany.

"Gospodi pomilui" means "Lord have mercy" in Russian.

The Queen Mary was a huge passenger liner that was converted into a soldier transport ship for the United States during World War II. The ship is quite important to both sides of my family. On my father's side, my great-grandfather was transported back to the United States after he was wounded during World War II, and on my mother's side, my mother emigrated from Germany as a child aboard the Queen Mary.

Site Y12 was the official name during the Manhattan Project for the place that would become Los Alamos National Laboratory.

John von Neumann was a Jewish Hungarian-born mathematician who designed the explosive lens necessary to create the Trinity atomic test explosion while he was visiting Los Alamos.

Winston Churchill used the name "Colonel Warden" while traveling between England and the United States aboard the Queen Mary during World War II.

Operation Overlord was the code name for the Allied invasion of Normandy.

Operation Bodyline was a series of missions to learn about and sabotage the German rocket program. It was renamed "Operation Crossbow" in 1943.


	23. Into the Fire

Chapter 23: Into the Fire

Fear did not move, not even to blink, as Sabine opened their cells with a key.

"Do you want to stay here or something, Fear?" Fury asked once everyone but Fear was in the hallway. "Like being locked up?"

Without warning, Sabine punched him in the jaw, hard enough that it stung but with no intention of causing a lasting injury.

"Shit!" Fury grumbled, rubbing his chin.

"You're utterly disgusting toward him, Fury. I've wanted to do that since France."

"I don't think you answered my question, Miss Sabine," the End croaked. "Who _are_ you?"

"Again, Sabine DeMille, an agent of the Philosophers. That is all any of you need to know."

Fear, who had not said a word when Sabine hit Fury, spoke quietly and deliberately. "Where's Sorrow?"

"He's safe. My partner already took him."

The guards in the hallway were dead or unconscious, lying awkwardly against the walls. Sabine crept to the window and hooked a rope ladder onto the sill.

"Three stories down," she said. "Fury first."

"Go to hell." Fury climbed out the window and descended.

"Fear, I hear you can scale brick walls. You will go last, after me. Take the ladder with you."

Once Sabine had reached the bottom and jumped the last five feet to the pavement, Fear gathered the ladder and attached it to the frame Sabine had given him to wear on his back.

"Who's there?" a voice shouted from the dark hall.

Fear darted forward with his arms outstretched. He caught the soldier around the neck and threw him to the floor.

"In - !" the man shouted before Fear, gripping the man by the jaw, broke the man's neck.

* * *

Sorrow reached for the moonlike orb that floated over him. Too far away. Too… he dropped his hand.

"You'll be okay," the orb said.

It was a woman's face above a dark blue uniform.

"Lay back," she said, and then she turned to a man who stood at the foot of Sorrow's bed. "His fever is coming down. I don't think it's serious. Just shock or maybe a cold."

"Thank you, Marietta," the man said. He leaned over to touch Sorrow's hand, and Sorrow could see the fresh cut down the left side of his face.

"So you're the Sorrow," the man said. "The Joy told me that you can speak to the dead. That's quite a talent."

"Joy?" Sorrow asked, his eyes two blue moons. "You have seen her?"

"Not since August," the young man sighed. "There was a time when we spent every day together, but that seems long - ."

"Lieutenant!" cried the nurse as a drop of blood from the young man's face landed on the white blanket covering the Sorrow.

"Yes'm!" the lieutenant said, saluting her animatedly.

"You're still bleeding, sir. Leave our patient here, and let me tend to you."

The young man, this English lieutenant, had the wound when he untied Sorrow from the chair at the hotel. Sorrow had only been conscious enough then to follow the man down a staircase to a basement hallway before he had collapsed.

Sorrow heard the nurse whisper something inaudible as she and the lieutenant left. A stern-faced man carrying an M1 carbine stepped into the room.

"Don't follow them," the man barked at Sorrow.

"Where is this?"

"You don't need to know that."

"Where are my comrades?"

"Somewhere else. Sit back down, sir. I do not want to shoot you."

* * *

Sabine led the other Cobras through the back door of a ruined wooden chair factory. They crept down a dim, dusty hallway formed by gutted machinery and cartons piled with pieces of wood once destined to become chair legs. At the top of a rusted metal staircase, Sabine tapped at the door of an office whose blacked windows looked out on the factory floor. There was a soft murmur and a giggle from inside, and then a man with an English accent called, "Just a moment, Sabine."

"David! I know what you're doing in there."

"Oh, please! I'm a big boy, Sabine."

The door opened, and a man in his early thirties surveyed them smugly with only his right eye as his left was covered with a bandage.

"David!" Sabine cried, reaching for his bandaged face. "How terrible! How did this happen?"

"Seems Scar Face has a flair for drama, but Marietta reckons it'll leave a right nasty scar. Ought to make me look rugged."

"Can we come in yet?"

David glanced over his shoulder before nodding and stepping aside. Marietta looked sheepishly at her shoes as she pinned her nurse's cap onto her disheveled hair. Sabine ushered the Cobras into the room and then down another hallway. She opened the door to an empty room that had once been a utility closet. Pain was reminded of the room where his poor bees lived at the hotel.

"You'll wait in here," Sabine said. Then she handed her lantern to Fear. "I believe this is yours."

Once all of them were inside, close enough to feel one another breathing, Sabine closed the door. A key turned, and a bolt fell.

"Hey! You locked us in!" Fury shouted, pounding on the door. "She fucking locked us in…"

"So, how do you know this woman, again?" Pain asked.

"She –she died to save us in Stuttgart," Fear muttered.

"Obviously she didn't bloody die!" Fury shouted. "She's probably in with the Nazis."

"But she rescued us from the Nazis."

"Could have been a ruse."

"Why would - ?"

"Fear, Fury," Pain said. "Who the hell is she?"

"Well… uh…," Fear stammered.

"She's a woman we met while traveling. Seemed nice at the time."

"Right."

"But she's locked us in a goddamn closet, that - ."

A group of footsteps marched toward the door. A key turned the lock again, and as Sabine opened it, four men with carbine rifles blocked the doorway.

"Gentlemen," she said to the Cobras with the same conceited smile David had, "you are now in the custody of the American Philosophers. We're going to get you out of Germany, but first I need to make one thing clear. Until further notice, you are prisoners. Ah, yes. And another will be joining you."

She nodded, and the armed men parted for a still sickly Sorrow to walk between them.

"Now that you're all together. I can tell you why you're here. We have reason to believe that your commander is a spy."

"No!" Sorrow shouted.

"Sadly, yes, and three of you probably knew it."

"You…" Sorrow shook, flushed with rage. "You cannot say that. We know her. She will do anything for her country."

The End grasped Sorrow's arm to steady him. "_Puzhalsta,_ Sorrow…," he said. "Please… Sabine, why do you think she would spy for the Germans?"

"We don't. We think she is spying for the Russians… which is why you, the Fury, and the Sorrow will stay in here tonight."

The armed men took Pain and Fear loosely by their arms. Fear jerked away.

"I'm staying here."

"Don't do this, Fritz," Sabine purred. "Everything will work out."

She stroked Fear's neck with the knuckle of her right middle finger.

"Just bloody go with the bitch," Fury growled.

Fear nodded and allowed the man to take his arm again.

* * *

The fir trees that had looked like brush in the sparse aerial photographs reached high above Joy as she approached the base of the plateau. She was ragged from her two-day hike through the dry forest. Her unit had lived like this most of the past two years, but perhaps their three months with the Nazis had softened her. Her equipment felt like it was made of stone and her hands like they were permanently trapped in a child's mittens. She picked a slow and rocky path up the side of the mesa toward Site Y12, the facility where she would find von Neumann.

At the top, Joy was startled to find the laboratory unprotected by walls or fences, as if its own remote location would protect the facility from intruders.

It was December 7, 1943, two weeks since she had left Berlin on a bitterly cold night. The pine forest was cold, even in the middle of the day, but the nights were not as bleak as the desert further south. Even with such a grim mission, she was glad to be back in America. The sandy rock, the pine needles scattered over the forest floor, the euphoria of breathing the scent of the untamed West reminded her why she would take such a mission. A spy, tearing apart her beloved country from within, could not be allowed to live. She watched the easternmost building from the trees until evening.

The Philosophers had intelligence on the laboratory, limited as it was. They only knew its location because one of the Philosophers, a man named Robert Underhill, was funding the facility from this post as Secretary-Treasurer of the University of California. From Astrus's words, Joy realized that the scope of this project was such that even the Philosophers were not certain what the U.S. government was planning, as if those who were involved, like Underhill, were keeping it secret from the other Philosophers.

As evening fell, and her camouflage's effectiveness reached its peak, Joy snaked between the trees until she reached the open stretch of rocky ground between the forest and the newly-built laboratories. Though there was no fence, the 50-yard span offered the protection of a clear view to anyone approaching. This building was blissfully unguarded though Joy could see a tower 200 yards to the north that would have a view to her approach. Her camouflage, hand-painted to match the golden New Mexico rock, would allow her to disappear when she was still, but little could disguise her movements.

She crawled across the exposed ground, stopping every few feet to glance at the tower. No shots rang. No alarm sounded. Almost there. The camouflage would be useless once she stood, and there was only one door. The windows were all darkened. She would have to wait until someone entered. A few moments later, a man in a white coat appeared from the gloom. He walked alone down the newly-laid pavement. Joy crept toward him like a scorpion on the sandy rock. He noticed her movement with a short gasp, but she was so close and quick that she caught the man by the mouth before he could speak and dragged him beside the building.

"I want to let you live," she growled at the terrified scientist. "Don't make me kill you."

He nodded enthusiastically.

"I need you to tell me where I can find John von Neumann."

He nodded again, this time slightly slower. Joy removed her hand.

"Are you a German?" the scientist asked.

"American. It's a top secret question I have for him, so the U.S. government sent me in this way. Now where is von Neumann?"

"In this building, at the end of the first floor hallway, on the right?"

"He's there now."

"It's his room. He was heading this way a half-hour ago when I last saw him."

Joy smiled like an angel of mercy.

"Bless you, sir," she said as she covered his mouth and stabbed him in the shoulder with a syringe of sodium thiopental.

The man collapsed in her arms, breathing heavily. She laid him behind the building and unlocked the door with his key. In only five minutes, the scientist would awaken, but she would be gone by then. She had her Colt M1911 drawn, but the hallway was empty. At the end of the hall, she turned the knob on the right hand door. It opened easily into a dark room. Joy surveyed the room for hiding places. A cot-like bed stood against one wall with a tiny table beside it. A man-sized wardrobe covered another wall. She jerked the door open but found only neatly-arranged suits. This was not a laboratory, not an office, but a guesthouse for visiting scientists. The facility encompassed acres of buildings, and von Neumann could be in any one. She sat on his bed for a moment to think and noticed a tiny gold frame on the table. In it was a photograph of a dark-haired girl, perhaps seven years old, sitting at the end of a wooden dock with her feet in the water. Joy laid the portrait face-down and left. Life favors those whose hearts do not hesitate in killing.

* * *

The soldiers led Pain and Fear into a carpeted room with a desk and couch.

"Brawk! It's the Pain!" called the End's parrot from a cage in one corner.

Sabine motioned for Pain and Fear to sit on the couch. To the guards, she said, "Thank you. You're dismissed."

David approached Pain with a small box which buzzed madly. "I believe this belongs to you."

Pain opened it and counted the bees inside with a glance. When he looked back at David, disappointment filled his face.

"Is this all?" Pain asked.

"All that I could get, yes. Word at the hotel was that you opened your mouth and bees flew out at your captors. An impressive story, no doubt embellished, but I saved as many as I could for you… at personal injury."

He showed Pain the stings on his arms, burgundy welts that still swelled.

Sabine perched on the edge of the desk with her legs and arms crossed.

"Well, David," she said, "what do you think?"

"I think your tastes are rather… bizarre, but I'm not one to - ."

"You know what I mean. Do you think they're trustworthy?"

"As I've said before, Sabine, I am not entirely convinced that she has done anything wrong."

"You can't let your history with her stop you from thinking."

"Wait," Pain said. "You know Joy?"

"Of course!" David said with a wistful smile. "I knew her before she was using that codename. I was on an officer exchange in the U.S. before the war began. She was only sixteen at the time but practically unmatched in enthusiasm for the armed forces. Her father, God rest his soul, was a pilot for the Army Air Corps, and I think she always assumed the Army would take her when she was old enough. The moment she turned seventeen, she tried to join, and they turned her down immediately. Naturally, she was devastated, so I asked her to return to England with me, as a special advisor."

"And if it weren't for her father, you'd have married her," Sabine snapped.

"That's not exactly what I said!"

"I remember when she left, how heartsick you were."

"Charming story, Davey," Fear sneered. "But how does that – heh… heheheh… Actually, funny you should mention a relationship with the boss because - ."

The Pain nudged him in the back, but he continued.

"Because she and the Sorrow have been storming the trenches together since we left Italy."  
"I don't quite follow."

"And that's for the best," Pain said.

Sabine grinned mischievously and leaned toward Fear.

"Maybe I should say, 'Sorrow's been storming _her_ trenches,'" Fear hissed with a vile grin to match Sabine's.

Pain smacked an enormous hand against the back of Fear's head. "Do you and Fury ever think before you speak?"

"I see," David whispered as he sat in an unpainted wooden chair across from the couch. "That explains many, many things."

* * *

Historical Notes:

The M1 carbine was an assault rifle carried by the United States military during World War II.

"Puzhalsta" means "please" in Russian.

Joy is infiltrating Site Y12 (Los Alamos) on the second anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. This was ENTIRELY accidental, but I realized it while on the second draft.

Robert Underhill really was the Secretary-Treasurer of the University of California at the time and one of the few people who knew the location of Site Y12.

John von Neumann's daughter was named "Marina", the same as Sorrow's sister.

The Army Air Corps was the predecessor to the Air Force. The U.S. Air Force would not be formed officially until 1947.


	24. The Assassination

Chapter 24: The Assassination

* * *

"Storming the trenches!" the End's parrot repeated smugly as David stared wordlessly at the two Cobras. Sabine yawned and stretched like a cat. Finally, Fear spoke.

"You already knew, then, eh Pain?" he asked sheepishly.

"The End told me."

"Ah."

"And with a bloody Commie too…," David muttered.

"Oh, come off it!" Sabine cried, leaping from her perch on the desk. "I don't care what your rank is, David. You'll never make it anywhere if you let your personal feelings get in the way. So she's in bed with one of the men in her unit. Not like I haven't fooled around with some of the Resistance boys, but I also know the dangers of pillow talk. I've used it to my advantage enough to see how easy it is to convince someone in those moments of vulnerability."

"So you think we might avoid having her court-martialed if we can prove it was the Sorrow who sent her on… what was the mission?"

"We're still not certain. Astrus spoke to her before she disappeared from Berlin, and from what she said, he gathered that it was some sort of assassination in the U.S."

"Good heavens!"

"What the hell is going on?" Fear grasped the front of David's shirt and pulled the Englishman's wounded face up to meet his own. "Do you know where the boss is?"

"Yes and no, you see? I - ."

"The simplest answer, dear Fritz," Sabine said, "is that we don't know where she is, but we will. If we find her before this mission is carried out, the entire affair will be in the hands of the Philosophers. If she carries out the mission, the United States will demand justice, and we must give them a suspect. If what you say is true – and a short interrogation should get that out of the Sorrow – then the Philosophers will protect the Joy and turn the Russian over to the U.S."

She gently pulled Fear's hand away from David's collar and entwined her fingers in his. "I know your… boss, as you say, allows you to do as you please, but if you want her to live, you will need to cooperate with us."

* * *

The first building to the west had looked like a laboratory from the outside, a windowless bunker of a building with a ventilation system on the roof. A pair of sentries guarded the only entrance. Joy had shot the first man and smashed the second against the cement wall. It was obvious immediately as she stepped inside that she was in a warehouse, a perfect target for sabotage but an unlikely place for a mathematician.

The short December twilight she had so cleverly taken into account when designing her camouflage had almost faded. She was already a ghostly silhouette against the forest, and soon not even lying on the ground would hide her shape. She might have five more minutes before she was discovered, but she could only give herself three. Both men outside the warehouse were dead, and she had given the scientist another injection of sodium thiopental two minutes ago. Three minutes until he awoke, another two to raise the alarm. She would be running through the pine forest by then.

Although she would lose some time, Joy decided to change into the darker camouflage she had worn in the forest. It was far from perfect, but it was all she had available – unless… she stripped the uniform from the least bloody of the two men and wrapped his body in her now-useless camouflage. At a distance, she would look like just another soldier, and the green uniform was at least dark enough for hiding in the shadows.

The next building was like a great Tudor-style house, and she would have passed it entirely if not for the thin wedges of light that shot through the cracks of the tightly-closed shutters. She circled the building. Front door. Back door. No sentries. Then, on the south side, a fire escape. It was the sort where the bottom portion of the stairs were raised up so that a normal person could not climb onto them from below. While this may have protected against the stray coyote, Joy could easily lower it with a hook. The scientist who stood on the second floor balcony was more difficult. He surveyed the darkening sky with a cigarette on his lips. The door behind him was propped open a few inches, but she couldn't simply shoot him. The scientists had to be left alive. Joy cursed herself for not asking the End the secret of his tranquilizer rifle.

The scientist would surely hear her pull the stairs down, and the structure looked rickety enough to shake as she climbed. The only way would be to lure him to the bottom.

"Hey!" she shouted just loudly enough for him to hear. "Could I bum a fag?"

The scientist looked down, and Joy hoped the low-pitched voice she was using sounded masculine enough.

"What's it worth to you?" the scientist jeered, leaning over the railing.

Joy did not have any coins, but she held up a paper dollar. "Give you a whole dollar for it."

"That's a pretty penny, but how will you get the dollar to me?"

The sun was dropping lower, and the bodies would be found soon. Joy wished that she could kill this man who gazed at her haughtily from behind thick glasses.

Joy turned away. "I guess I'll ask someone else."

She heard footsteps behind her on the fire escape.

"I was just having a spot of fun, soldier," the scientist laughed.

As soon as the stairs were low enough, Joy stepped onto them. She reached out her hand to take the cigarette the scientist offered, but then she moved past it to clamp one hand over his mouth. With her other hand, she jammed her third syringe into his shoulder. He was unconscious almost instantaneously. Joy left the sleeping scientist on the stairs and dropped the dollar onto his chest.

Joy peeked through the cracked door into a long, bright room with a counter and cabinets along the wall. A second scientist stacked trays in one of the cabinets. She had one, maybe two minutes until the entire facility would be searching for her. Even if she did find von Neumann, there would be no time to escape. She breathed slowly and deeply, filling her lungs with cool, dry air and her mind with the mission.

With the tiniest creak, she opened the door. The scientist heard the sound but did not turn.

"You're such a pig, Mills," he said, moving to the next cabinet. "You've always got to take your damn smoke when I ask you to help me clean up."

Joy used her last syringe on the scientist and turned off the lights in the room. She crept quickly to a door on the other end and opened it into a hallway. Joy raised her head and tried to look like a soldier patrolling the lab as she walked down the right side of the hallway. She passed vaguely labeled rooms and a few men in suits or lab coats hurrying into the rooms. At the end of the hallway, a group of four men and one woman blocked the stairs. In the center of this crowd was John von Neumann, laughing as someone made a joke. He laughed with his entire face, from the corners of his eyelids to the rounded tip of his nose, as if the universe and everything in it were one big joke with a punch line only he knew.

The mathematician caught Joy's eye and shared his smile with her. There could be no escape. This was her chance to kill him. She hit the safety on her .45.

The alarm sounded suddenly, a shrill tone unlike a fire bell. Von Neumann scurried down the stairs. His colleagues blocked the clear shot Joy had to his head. Perhaps she could get it again at the bottom of the stairs. She followed his little group into the stairwell.

"Where are you going, private?" a soldier in the hallway shouted.

"That's him!" the smoking scientist cried, leaning dazedly against the wall.

Joy vaulted over the railing and landed on the cement floor at the base of the stairs. Three soldiers stormed through the door in front of her. An unknown number waited on the landing above. Von Neumann and three other scientists huddled on the stairs. If Joy killed the three soldiers in front of her, von Neumann would run through the door, but she had no cover from these men like she did from those on the floor above. She shot all three with her carbine and watched for only a moment as the scientists clambered over their bodies.

Joy moved out from under the landing. There were six men on the stairs, fresh-faced American soldiers with carbine rifles like hers. In a half-second, Joy's rational mind gauged the risk of racing for the door. Even if it took only two seconds, she would be dodging almost two hundred bullets. She would have to kill most of them if she hoped to make it. She fired at the three men closest to the bottom and then plunged again into the darker space under the landing. Bullets ricocheted off of the metal stairs, and the soldiers slowed their rate of fire. Joy stepped into the open again. There were three men left, ready to fire on the door from the landing. She shot the man in the middle and watched him just long enough to know she had hit her mark. Of the two men left, only one seemed intent on killing her. He aimed for her head. She could dodge that on her way to the door. The other man aimed for her lower abdomen. If she got hit, that would be an excruciating wound, but she could still get to von Neumann before she collapsed. She ran.

* * *

The hot, oppressive darkness of the utility closet was nothing like the strange blankness of the world where Sorrow met the dead. That place was like a chalkboard, a black slate against which the dead could be seen.

Fury was cursing – in Russian. It was the first time in many years Sorrow had heard some of those words, and they made him blush a little.

"Fuck the broad and that little Gypsy Jew parasite bitch - !"

"Really, Fury?" the End rasped. "You think it's somehow the Fear's fault?"

"No. It's your goddamn fault, Sorrow! You've been cleaning the boss's chimney."

"Um… I'm not certain…"

"God, you're dense! Exploring her forests, conquering her valleys. You were fucking, you know, _yebatsya_."

Sorrow's face flushed a deep cranberry in the darkness at the crude Russian word.

"Ah… I…"

"Fury, that's enough," the End wheezed. "Now that we all know, let's agree that this information stays with us. Until we know what's going on, the Philosophers need not know that she has _an interesting condition_."

Sorrow yelped as Fury grasped him by the hair. "Aw, fuck, Sorrow! You got her fucking pregnant? No wonder she's gone, probably ran back home to her daddy."

"She can't," Sorrow gasped. "He's dead."

Fury pulled his hand out of Sorrow's hair. "When did this happen?"

"When we were in Italy. He was murdered."

"How did you - ?"

"I talk to spirits, remember?"  
"God, you're much meaner in Russian. Maybe you should go back to German."

Then the End, quietly and emphatically, said, "You don't think perhaps she went for…"

He never finished the sentence aloud, but all three men thought the same word:

_Revenge._

_

* * *

_

Joy bowed her head as she dashed toward the door, and the soldier aiming to kill missed every shot. The other soldier hesitated, and she was certain for a moment that she would get away without injury. Then she heard the pop as he fired, and the child she carried inside of her took over thinking for her rational side. She ducked, not just her head but her entire body until her knees hit the floor, and she dove for the door. It flew open, and three more soldiers entered. Then pain exploded across the right side of her head. White light like she had seen when Sorrow took her into her father's memory filled her eyes.

"He's down!"

"Hold your fire! He's down!"

"It's a goddamn woman!"

"What the - ?"

The voices faded as if she were falling down an endless well.

"I think you fucking killed her," she heard a man say as the pain dulled and her thoughts ended.

* * *

Historical Notes:

"Fag" is an older slang word for a cigarette.

Sodium thiopental, as I forgot to mention in my notes from the last chapter, is a fast-acting anesthetic, but because it moves through the bloodstream so fast, it also wears off quickly. It used to be used as the first stage in anesthesia to get a patient to sleep before a heavier anesthetic was used. Today, it is still used as the first stage of a lethal injection. It is also known as Sodium Pentothol, which has been portrayed often in fiction as a pain-inducing chemical.

"Yebatsya" is the crudest Russian term for having sex.

"An interesting condition" is an old Russian euphemism for pregnancy.


	25. The Dog's Smile

Chapter 25: The Dog's Smile

* * *

"Shouldn't we escape?" Pain asked after he and Fear had been laying on their cots in silence for an hour.

Morning glistened on the fresh snow, but neither of them could see it through the blacked-out windows.

"We can't," Fear said.

"We've gotten out of much worse situations! This place would be easy as pie to break out of."

"What's the point? Where would we go?"

"To find the boss."

Fear sighed. "No point. We'll never find her before the Philosophers do. And then the Cobras would be disbanded."

"I don't trust the Philosophers."

"The boss does."

"Does she? Do we know what she actually thinks?"

Fear stretched and folded his arms under his head.

"You're sweet on that woman," Pain said.

"And you're not?"

"Not Joy. That Sabine woman."

Fear smiled without a hint of his usual cunning. "She's not afraid of me. She's like the boss."

"Don't you compare them!" Pain shouted, sitting up. "You hardly know this woman, and from what I can see, they have nothing in common. I'm going to break the others out. You can come with me or stay with your precious Sabine."

_Precious Fritz._ That was what she had called him. She was as mysterious as the forests of his homeland just before sunset – not Spain but Bulgaria, where he was born and where he had met the Joy.

"I'll come with you," Fear sighed.

They dressed quickly. Day would come soon, and they would have only a short time to escape Berlin with both the Gestapo and the Philosophers following. Fear opened the door, and Sabine stepped into his path.

"Fritz!" she cried. "I never expected you to betray me this way."

"Move, woman!" Pain bellowed.

"Or what?"

"My bees are trained to burrow under your skin, to kill you so agonizingly - ."

"Stop it, Pain."

"Dammit, Fear! This is supposed to be your bag, striking fear into people."

"I'm not going to let you hurt her. Escape on your own. I'll stay here."

"Neither of you will es - ."

"Am I interrupting something?" asked a voice from the doorway on Sabine's right.

"Major!" Sabine cried. "When did you get back?"

Astrus walked into the hallway behind her. "Only ten minutes ago. Your brother said I would find you here. What pray tell are you doing to our operatives?"

"You said before you left - ."

"I told you to keep them here after you rescue them. From what David says, you're keeping the three Russians in a utility closet."

"Well, I - ."

"This will not do. I need them in London immediately. There have been some… changes."

"The Joy?"

"She was seen last evening boarding a ship to America. It may be as you feared."

Sabine nodded solemnly.

"I'm afraid the Cobra Unit will have to come with me before the Gestapo finds all of you. You do understand, Sabine."

"Of course."

When Sabine opened the door to the closet, Fury rushed from the darkness and shoved her against the wall.

"What was the meaning of that, bitch?" he snarled.

Sabine looked at Astrus pleadingly. "I don't know Russian."

"Fury, please. Let her go. You're coming with me."

"Not going to take us in a fucking cage or something, are you?"

"No. Now please, let her go, and speak English. You're making it worse."

Fury shook the woman once more by the shoulders before he let her go.

The End, barely hiding a smile, stepped into the hallway. "Sorrow and I tried to hold him back, but as you can see, he's not an easy man to control."

"Gentlemen," Astrus said. "I do hate to interrupt, but I have a car waiting outside. We have a very small window of time for getting out of Berlin. Excuse us, Sabine."

"I'll see you out."

They met David on the old factory floor, where he shook Astrus's hand heartily.

"Good-bye, Major, and good luck," David said.

"And you, m'boy. Fight the good fight. Well, men, let's head out."

All of the Cobras but Fear followed Astrus to the door. Fear watched them march away and called, "When did we decide to go with Astrus? Didn't I tell you I was staying here, Pain?"

"Not that again," Pain growled.

"You can't, Fritz," Sabine said. "You have to go with Astrus. If I separated the Cobras, the Philosophers would have my head."

She kissed his cheek. "Until we meet again."

The note! "Sabine," Fear said, "one last thing. The note you gave me."

Her eyes snapped up to meet his.

"What note?" she said, but her eyes warned: _Don't talk about the note._

"It's fine now. You're with Major Astrus. You can trust him."

_He's not to be trusted,_ her face told him.

* * *

On the first of December, just before midnight, Astrus and the Cobra Unit paraded down a dark and empty corridor at SOE's London bureau.

"Why the hell did you have to wait until night to bring us here?" Fury growled as Astrus motioned them into a room on the left.

"There are some here who still do not trust the Russians."

"Ungrateful bastards! After so many have died on the Russian front?"

"As you can see, I'm entirely on your side. That's why I had to get you out of there."

The door opened, and Jonathan Thomas, looking more harassed than Sorrow had seen him in his vision, stomped into the room.

"This better be important, Astrus!" he shouted. "You called in the middle of the bloody night with no – my God, it's the Cobra Unit!"

"Yes, Jonathan."

Sorrow glared through Thomas with his milky eyes, and the man stepped back into the doorway, clearly unnerved.

"You're still playing with these freaks, Astrus?"

"Of course. I just rescued them from Berlin."

"From the Nazis?"

"No. From the other Philosophers."

"My oh my, but why did you call me here like this?"

Thomas stalked cautiously to his desk, the whole time staring at Sorrow's eyes.

"I have learned a great deal about their talents, Thomas, and I think they are exactly what we need for Operation Serum."

"And with their commander - ."

"_Jonathan!_ That's a highly sensitive subject. I'm certain they don't want to be reminded…"

Fear noticed the subtle warning in Astrus's voice. Thomas had been about to say that Joy was "out of the way", and Astrus had stopped him.

"No," Fear said, "we would like to be reminded, especially if you know where she is."

Astrus did not hesitate as he answered, "That's the dog's smile, isn't it? We know that she went back to America, but the question, of course, is 'Why?'"

"Well, Sabine seemed to know."

"And she would be entirely mistaken. She jumps to conclusions. No doubt her head is full of mystery novels."

"But - ."

"Fear," Fury interrupted, "are you trying to get us fucking arrested again?"

"I assure you," Thomas said, "that nothing any of you can say will get you arrested. The Philosophers need you, no matter what alarmists like Sabine might tell you. The world may be divided, but the Philosophers seek unity. Sewing the seeds of disparity will not be tolerated."

As Sorrow watched the fretful man trying not to look at his eyes, he knew there was one thing he could say that would probably get all of them killed. He held his jaw firm as he had with Skorzeny.

"No need to sound so threatening, Mr. Thomas. All of this was a rather complex misunderstanding," Astrus said with a wily grin. "It's very likely that she is in the U.S. for much more… personal reasons. Now, I am certain everyone wants to get a little sleep, so let us tell our friends about the operation."

* * *

"Atlas Briggs, sir," the man snapped.

"True," Fear yawned.

"And your rank, Mr. Briggs?" Astrus asked calmly.

"Staff Sergeant, sir," the square-jawed black man named Atlas Briggs shouted.

"True."

"And your age, Mr. Briggs?"

"Twenty-four, sir."

"True." Fear stifled another yawn with his hand.

"And now, Sergeant, I need you to tell me what is going on at 2232 Norton Street."

Atlas opened his eyes wider, stark whites with black centers against his dark face. The movement was subtle, but Fear saw it.

"I swear to you, sirs. I have never been there before."

"He's lying," Fear said, leering at the prisoner.

"Finally," Astrus sighed. "Well, Fear. Make him talk."

"My pleasure…" He drew out the word until it was a hiss.

* * *

"There are six people in there besides Fifer," Sorrow said as he opened his eyes. "Two in some sort of library on the second floor, three talking at a table on the first floor, and the last in the basement."

"Where's Fifer?" the End asked.

"I don't – that is to say, they don't - ."

"Dammit, Sorrow. You know I'm not going to kill him!"

"Yes, but on your signal, Fury is going to kill the rest of them, and well, the spirit is a little girl, and she doesn't want to see her home destroyed and - ."

"And she's dead. It doesn't matter. They're using the place to pick targets in London for the German rockets. I'm sure she doesn't want to see her city destroyed."

"Do you really trust Astrus?"

"Truthfully, no. He's an old fox, and Thomas is a little ferret. Still, it's obvious that they are with the Philosophers, and without the boss here, we have no one else."

"Do you really - ?"

"Sorrow, where is Fifer?"

Sorrow sighed and asked the girl again where the man named Fifer was.

"It seems he got the note from Briggs," Sorrow said. "He's putting on his coat to leave."

The End tilted his rifle up onto the windowsill and waited until the man in his long green coat was several feet down the pavement. He fired, and Fifer fell, unconscious, onto the stones. A tall, burly man with his face covered knelt over Fifer as an explosion shook the street. Roofing tiles and chunks of brick rained on the cars and pedestrians, and the enormous man protected Fifer with his body. Then he lifted the sleeping man into his arms and carried him to a car waiting several yards away.

It was a blustery Tuesday afternoon in London, December eighth, seven days since the Cobra Unit had arrived. They had met with Thomas and Astrus only by night, and today they would meet Astrus at a house in the country rather than the London headquarters.

* * *

"Do you even know how to drive?" Pain grumbled as Fury pulled up onto the pavement, narrowly missing Sorrow and the End.

"Shut your damn mouth, Pain," Fury murmured while the End climbed into the front seat, and Sorrow wedged himself into the back beside Pain and the unconscious Fifer.

The man's graying head lolled into Sorrow's lap, and he pushed it away, disgusted. The streets were filling with gawkers and emergency vehicles.

"Hope you're ready to go because we're getting out of here fast," Fury said as he peeled away from the curb and dodged a woman standing in the street with her son. "Get out of the bloody road, bitch!"

Fury careened down the crowded streets as Pain shouted directions. Soon they were on an empty road, wide and smooth, leading to the country house. Fury relaxed his hands on the wheel as he drifted, corrected, drifted, corrected down the road.

"So Sorrow, did I kill them?" Fury asked casually.

"Yes…"

"Please, Fury," the End said. "Don't speak like that. Some of them were civilians."

"Think I give a rat's ass? They're traitors."

"None of them were German," Sorrow said. "They were all Americans."

"Doesn't mean a goddamn thing!"

"Do you not wonder what this Operation Serum is? Who is controlling this?"

"Sorrow," the End said, "we already talked about this. We have no one to trust but the Philosophers."

"I know who killed Joy's father."

The car drifted to the right as Fury turned around. "You're only now telling us?"  
"Watch the road, dipshit!" Pain shouted.

"Shit!" Fury jerked the wheel back to the left. "You were saying, Sorrow?"

"I saw her father die, in his memory. Jonathan Thomas killed him."

"Shit!" Fury shouted again.

"The road!" Pain growled.

"And you waited this long to tell us?"

"It was not important until this week, and no one wanted to speak of it. I wanted to tell."

"I know this may sound wrong," Pain said, "but I don't think we should do anything."

"Who made you leader?" Fury grumbled.

"I was the first Joy picked for her unit."

"Because she hadn't met me yet!"

"Will you listen for a second? Astrus probably doesn't know either, and if we tell him, we will be the catalyst for a power struggle within the Philosphers. Right now, they can still function, but if they are fighting each other, the war effort… and finding the boss… will be lost in the confusion. Get it?"

"We going to tell the Fear?" Fury asked.

Pain paused. "No. Not even the Fear. He has been acting strange lately anyway."

* * *

When they arrived at the house, Astrus stood by the gate in a heavy coat. Without his usual smile, he ushered them into the house. Two men took Fifer upstairs, and Astrus motioned for the Cobras to follow him down a wood-paneled hallway.

He spoke softly and bleakly as they walked. "Another mission complete. There is no doubt she chose her unit well. Through here."

He led them down a darker hallway with peeling pink wallpaper covering the top half of the wall and white-washed wood on the bottom. Like the rest of the house, this hallway was lit by gas, but only some of the sconces were lit, their tiny flames casting the group's shadow across the opposite wall so that they looked like a many-legged beast. Astrus opened a door into a room painted red. As Sorrow stepped onto the red carpet that covered the floor, he saw that the armchair, couch, and wooden bookshelves were all red. Even the silk curtains filled the room with crimson light, and in one corner, hanging sullenly in the duskiest part of the room, was the red flag of his own country.

The Fear rose from the armchair to greet them, his pointed face morose and made sinister by the strange light. He gazed at Sorrow for a moment then narrowed his eyes and looked toward Astrus.

"Please sit, everyone," Astrus said, his expression solemn.

Everyone but the Pain sat. "I stand," he said defiantly.

Astrus closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and then looked each of them in the eye as he spoke. "I had hoped, somehow, to be relieved of this task, but it seems there is no one else who can tell you this…"

"Then you'd better goddamn tell us," Fury muttered.

Fear looked at him sharply.

"Perhaps it is just as well," Astrus said. "Your commander… the Joy… is dead."

Sorrow was overcome by a nauseating euphoria. After two weeks of silence, he could contact her! He fought the dizziness, the strangely hypnotic light of the red room, but Astrus's next words broke his concentration.

"And she died a traitor."

* * *

Historical Notes:

In real life, SOE had several headquarters in and around London, but for simplicity's sake, I have one in the story.


	26. Unbridled

Chapter 26: Unbridled

* * *

The driver's dark hair blew loosely in the wind, held back by a silk scarf dotted with printed poppies. The road twisted into the hollow, lined with massive, moss-covered trees that blurred as the woman turned another corner in the burgundy Cadillac.

"Wheeee!" squealed the driver as the car dropped down a hill deeper into the valley. She glanced into the back seat. "Isn't this fun, Ellie?"

The little girl nodded silently.

"Don't be a spoil sport, doll," the man in the front passenger seat said, turning to Ellie with a wink.

He was dressed in pilot chic with a long, white scarf thrown dashingly over one shoulder. He looked every bit like Charles Lindbergh with longer hair, so much so that the woman had taken to calling him "Charlie".

"Where's Papa?" Ellie asked.

The driver laughed. "What do you mean? He's where he always is – working. What's wrong, Ellie? You usually like this road."

"Why couldn't we wait for Papa?"

"I wanted you to meet Charlie, darling dear. Isn't he a gem?"

Still holding the wheel, she leaned over to kiss him.

"Mama!" Ellie cried as the car moved toward the other side of the road. Another car appeared from around the bend.

The woman pulled her car back into its lane as the other driver passed, honking and shaking his fist.

"Oh, Ellie! I know how to drive. I swear you lecture me like James's mother. Wheee! Oh, golly, Ellie! Scream with me! It's all in good fun."

"That reminds me, Alice," Charlie said. "I brought some refreshment for the picnic."

He pulled a long bottle out of the picnic basket beside Ellie.

"Is that - ?" Alice gasped.

"My family's own. Could have sold it for fifty dollars, but I saved it for you, hon."

"Don't josh me, Charlie! No one pays fifty dollars for a bottle of wine."

"Perhaps it was an exaggeration, but my uncle gave his left arm a couple of years ago for a pint of whiskey that turned out to be half axle grease."

Alice threw her head back into an unbridled laugh. Her dark curls spilled over the cream seat.

"Isn't he the most, Ellie? Could you give me a taste right now, Chollie? Pretty pretty please…"

"Didn't you have enough to drink before we left?"

"Just a taste?"

"Wait, Alice."

"Oh, fine," the woman said, sinking into a pout. "Well, if I can't have a taste of wine then perhaps a taste of you will do."

She took Charlie's face in both hands and pressed her lips against his.

The Cadillac's front tires hit the grassy embankment on the right side.

"Mama!" Ellie screamed.

Alice took the wheel again with one hand and yanked it to the left.

"I'm fine, Ellie. I - ."

The tires spun, and the car skidded across the left lane. Alice's face turned white.

"What the hell's going on?" Charlie cried.

Alice swung the wheel again, and the car reeled, tires screeching on the paved road. Then all three sat in eerie silence as the Cadillac tipped to the right and slid into the trees. Ellie was tossed against the glass door and screamed as her head crashed against the roof. As her consciousness faded, she caught her mother's scarf, glistening with fresh blood.

* * *

"No doubt," Astrus said grimly, "some of you will want to stay with me and continue our work, but as of today, the Cobra Unit is disbanded."

"Fuck," Fury whispered.

"You are all welcome to work for us. The Philosophers, as always, will treat you well."

The End stood slowly, using the arm of the couch for support. He turned to face Joy's unit.

"I'm as devastated as the rest of you, to be sure," he said.

"To be sure," his parrot echoed, laying its feathery head against the End's hairy cheek.

"But I've had a life full of bad news to prepare me for this. Major Astrus, as much as it may hurt, please answer their silent question and tell us how the Joy was killed. After that, we will not mention her name again."

Sorrow wanted to shut Astrus's answer out as if it were one of the voices, but he could not leave without knowing the fate of the woman he had loved and the child she had carried.

Astrus looked back at five pairs of eyes: Pain's black eyes flashing like beetle's wings, Fury's brown eyes now dark as the space between the stars, the End's veiny no-color eyes as large as golf balls, Fear's amber eyes full of red rays, and Sorrow's filmy blue orbs floating behind his spectacles.

"I thought, of course," Astrus began, "that she was going for revenge on those who had murdered her father. I could never have predicted that her true target was a Jewish mathematician named John von Neumann. Apparently the Nazis were afraid of being outdone by a Jewish scientist and sent her to kill him. Perhaps this is all my fault in the end…" He sighed. "I recommended the Cobra Unit for the mission in Italy. I thought she was the only one who could withstand being swayed after so much time with the Germans… but…"

_This is wrong,_ Sorrow thought. _Entirely wrong._ But perhaps it wasn't. She had disappeared the night of Skorzeny's promotion, and hadn't she left with Old Boy? And it was not just that night but several times each week after that.

"If she had succeeded in her mission," Astrus continued, "it would have stopped a secret American weapons program in its tracks. If she had not been killed in the attempt, she would have been executed. Perhaps it was all… for the best."

It was unquestionably a charming speech, especially convincing with Astrus sobbing and sniffling like a fool. Fear would have been convinced too if Astrus didn't keep flicking his buggy little eyes back at him every few seconds. This motion was, of course, imperceptible to everyone else. Astrus probably didn't even realize he was doing it, but that liar's tic had confirmed for Fear that Sabine's note was more important now than ever.

"I believe we have spoken enough about this subject. You may return for tonight to the hotel in London. If you wish to continue with the Philosophers, tell the bellman tomorrow."

Astrus watched forlornly as Pain, Fury, and the End left. Fear stood, but Astrus motioned for him to stay.

"Sorrow," Astrus said, catching Sorrow's coat. "I am very interested… that is to say that the Philosophers have watched you for a long time. We always had use for your talents, but Joy insisted on keeping you for herself. Now that she's…"

"You can say it. She is dead."

"Yes, we could use you to your fullest potential. Would you consider it?"

"Thank you, but no."

"Why not? You have nowhere else to go."

"I have… places…"

"You want to contact her."

Sorrow did not answer. His pale eyes turned to meet Astrus's. Then he walked to the door.

"I will wait as long as I need to for you, Sorrow. Stay at the hotel as long as you wish."

"Thank you," Sorrow said as he left.

Fear had listened to their exchange with little interest. The Cobras didn't matter anymore. His thoughts were with Sabine. Fear had spent the past week under Astrus's thumb, but without the other Cobras to protect, he was free to escape.

Astrus had been lying, but what was the lie – how the Joy had died or whether she was dead at all? Sorrow seemed confident that she was gone, but perhaps he was uncertain like he had been at the house in Marquise. His power was not exact.

Astrus closed the door behind Sorrow and stood in front of it with his arms crossed.

"What is your plan, Fear?"

Astrus knew he was going to run, and Fear could see that he didn't want that to happen. Now that they both knew, he may as well.

"I'm not staying here," Fear hissed, showing Astrus his long tongue as he cracked his joints luridly.

"Your tactics won't scare me," Astrus said. His voice was calm and measured, but the wrinkle in the center of his brow gave him away.

Fear smiled at him sideways. Astrus stalked toward him as he spoke. "You have heard and seen a lot here. I can't have you going back to the others, Fear. I'm sure you understand."

Astrus was just the right distance away now. Fear leapt. His feet hit Astrus in the chest, and his right hand aimed at the bridge of the old man's nose. Astrus was nimbler than Fear had expected, and he caught the hand before Fear could shatter his nose. Both men tumbled onto the carpet. Fear wrenched his arms away with a sharp crack and sprang off of the old man's chest to the door. Astrus snapped to his feet as the Fear dashed down the hallway.

"Stop him!" he cried, but Fear threw both guards outside of the room into the gas sconces. Two sconces crashed to the floor, igniting the dry tongues of peeling wallpaper immediately. Fury would have been proud.

"Just bloody shoot him!" Astrus shouted as he pulled the fire alarm.

The echoes of gunshots rang above the clanging fire bells as Fear vaulted down the hallway to the open door at the end. Blue sunlight stung his eyes, accustomed to the dark corridors of the house, but Fear did not hesitate. He ran until the lowest branches of the skeleton trees scratched his face, and then he swung himself onto a limb and disappeared.

* * *

The fact that the hotel was owned by the Philosophers was obvious from the way the bellman greeted each smartly-dressed guest like an old friend and turned away weary travelers with the excuse that there were no vacancies. The hotel bar buzzed with voices speaking Cantonese and Mandarin and many of the varied Slavic languages of the Soviet Union. Fury leaned over the bar and shouted in Russian that the bear's ass of a bar tender had better bring him some vodka – Moskovskaya and nothing from Lithuania or something – before he blew the whole place to hell. A woman who must have understood him gasped, but the bar tender held a hand up to calm her. He poured Fury a glass and set the entire bottle in front of him.

The man sitting beside him, lanky and beady-eyed, asked, "Lose your woman?"

"I've had my interrogation for the week," Fury snarled. "Shut your goddamn mouth, or I'll show you how the Nazis torture someone."

* * *

Fury had departed unceremoniously as soon as the Philosophers' car had left them in front of the hotel.

"Guess I'll go pack," Pain said.

"Where are you going?" the End asked.

"Where ya goin'?" the parrot echoed.

"Scotland. I never enlisted like you did, and I doubt my father wants me back. What about you, old man?"

"I'm a soldier, perhaps too old to fight, but too hardened to go home. I suppose I'm going back out to the country tomorrow."

"And you, Sorrow? You staying here or going back to Russia?"

"There is nothing in Russia."

"Don't tell me that! It's a place I've always wanted to live."

Sorrow shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. He had tried to contact Joy in the car while he had silence, but she did not speak.

"Well, gentlemen," the Pain said with a solemn tip of his hat, "I believe this is 'adieu'. It was… a great honor."

"I'll follow you in," the End groaned. "The cold isn't doing anything good for my old bones. Sorrow?"

Sorrow heard him only as a vague echo in a chorus of millions. The voices invaded, shouting, droning, screaming, but none of them the voice he wanted.

"Do you think we should leave him?" Pain asked.

"There is nothing we can do," the End replied, shaking his bald, liver-spotted head. "He won't let go of her."

* * *

"Shit, not you," Fury moaned ten minutes later when Sorrow wandered bleary-eyed into the bar.

Sorrow stumbled into the stool beside Fury and balanced himself precariously on it.

"I will, ah, have what he has," Sorrow sputtered.

"The barman knows Russian," Fury grumbled, pushing Sorrow, who was slowly tilting toward Fury, upright again. "You can order like a real man, like this: hey, keep! This asshole wants the strongest fucking shit you have!"

"That's not my way, Fury."

"Yeah, well it will have to be if you want to get by in this world by yourself. I won't take care of your sorry hide."

The bar tender slammed another glass and bottle in front of Sorrow. "You Russians are going to drink me out of my entire vodka supply. Astrus'll owe me one after this," he said under his breath, and then he turned to Fury. "I think your comrade's already drunk."

"He's always like this."

The stringent smell of the vodka as it touched his lips brought Sorrow back to the smoothly-sanded bar, the cool glass in his hand, the multi-lingual chatter around him, and the reality that the Cobra Unit was no more. He sighed and tipped half of the glass down his throat. Sorrow had never tasted vodka, and now that he did, he realized that it had less of a flavor than a burn.

"So Fear never showed up," Fury said, pouring another quarter glass.

"You care about him," Sorrow said quietly.

"The dirty little Gypsy? Shit, of course I do. I can't believe he's just… Have you talked to her yet?"

"I tried, in the car and then again outside. I haven't found her yet."

"Hell, do you think she might…"

"Not likely. I only tried a little. I'll try harder."

"Don't break yourself," Fury grunted. "I don't need her giving orders from beyond the grave."

They were both silent for a few minutes before Fury set his glass on the table and slid off of the stool. "I'm going to bed. No use talking anymore."

Sorrow nodded.

"Hey, keep!" Fury shouted as he left. "You can have the rest of the bottle. On me. Well, on the Philosophers."

"Um…," Sorrow said sheepishly. "Actually, I'll take both bottles back to my room."

* * *

The bedraggled creature that knocked on the door of London's SOE headquarters two days later terrified the young woman who answered into a near-faint. The coarse black hair that he usually kept tied at the back of his neck hung loose and grimy, strewn with bits of dead leaves. His skin was smeared with dirt which he had used to camouflage himself in the leafless forest. The most repulsive aspect of the Fear's sudden appearance at the SOE headquarters was the intense crimson fire in his eyes.

"I must speak to Sabine DeMille!" he roared at the poor woman who shook like a pear tree when a child is trying to get the fresh fruit to fall from its branches.

"I…," she squeaked. "I don't…"

"What an unpleasant surprise," said a familiar male voice behind her.

The door opened wider, and David, half of his face still covered by a cloth bandage, nodded for Fear to come in. The woman cowered as he brushed past her, and Fear flicked his tongue at her. She screamed and sank further down the wall.

"It's alright!" David called loudly to anyone who could hear. To Fear, he snapped, "What was the point of that?"

Fear glared back at the lieutenant. "Where's Sabine?"

"What is it you need with her?"

"The Russian Philos - ."

David slapped a hand over Fear's filthy lips. "_Not here!_"

He opened the door to a small, sparsely-decorated office.

"As you were saying," he said, taking a seat behind the desk.

"Over three months ago," Fear said, "Sabine gave me a note. It was written in a code like this."

Fear snatched a piece of paper and a pen from David's desk and wrote out the string of letters. "And when I finally decoded it, it looked like this."

He wrote under the string of letters: _The Russian Philosophers set you up. Head for London. SD_

"Oh, my. Well, it was rather a simple cipher. I can't believe it took you so long, really."

"Davey - ."

"Lieutenant Oh, if you please."

"Fine. Mr. Oh, what in the hell does this mean?"

David sighed. "It's rather a long story."

"And if it ends where the boss was killed, then I have a right to hear it!"

David blanched and choked momentarily on his tea. "Yes, I – I learned of that myself yesterday. If Sabine had only been a little clearer with you, we could have prevented the – the incident which led up to… Joy's demise. Oh, my. I've spilled my tea."

David wiped the table with a handkerchief.

"You're deliberately avoiding the subject," Fear insisted.

"I'm not. It's just that what's done is done. The Soviets had her entirely convinced that they were us, and our attempts to reach the Cobra Unit were thwarted at every turn. Sabine was the only one who could reach any of you, and you were always with that Russian."

"Fury?"

"Yes. She took a big chance and almost got killed…"

"What does the note mean?"

"Originally, the American Philosophers, for whom Sabine and I work, meant to send you on a mission into France, but somehow you were redirected to Germany. Our contact was found beaten and dehydrated after days in the basement of his house in Marquise. That's when we went on the hunt for you."

The Sorrow had been right. There had been someone else in the house, trapped in the basement, unable to cry for help. If they had said something then, they could have saved the boss. Hadn't Fear seen that Astrus was a liar? At that point in the mission, he had expected some lies. Your contact never gives you the whole truth.

"You were kept from us, and when you never completed the original mission, we denied that you had ever existed. Then, only three days ago, we learned that Major Astrus had been bringing you here at night to interrogate Americans involved in a secret operation called 'The Pond'. That night, we set up a guard here, but Astrus never showed. Then the next day, that house some of the American operatives were using as a base was blown up. We have kept this place heavily guarded ever since, but if they have Astrus in their pocket, he knows better than to destroy it."

"I know where he is, if you're trying to find him," Fear said excitedly.

"Yes. We do too, but we're not playing their game. The American Philosophers aren't interested in this sort of petty revenge, and frankly, we need the Russians on our side if we hope to win the war." David looked past Fear at the closed door. "It's a bitter situation for me too. Their spy game has already cost me a close friend and the woman I loved. I'm determined that it doesn't also take my sister."

"Sabine?"

"She is young and foolish, and she runs off on her own. I can give you some missions where you may cross paths… but it will be very important that you do not speak to her. She can't know that I sent you, or she'll do something reckless."

* * *

As Sorrow dropped into the hotel bed, the warmth of the vodka engulfed him from within. The sun was well over the horizon, but he did not bother to turn on the light. Moonlight reflected on his spectacles as he closed his eyes. He did not sleep. For the first time in a year, he simply listened to the voices. How long had it been since he had let them fill his mind unguarded? Perhaps since his childhood in Velitsky. He opened his mind to them.

The voices pleaded, boasted, and cried, some newly dead and some centuries gone from the earth. Sorrow did not filter them or focus on one over another, so they formed a cacophony, like a radio with its dial set to all stations at once. A room full of radios. A world full of radios.

And then he felt his hand moving, heard a sardonic laugh in his voice. The spirits hushed to the background as a hanged serial killer's thoughts played in his head, _Diana, Dinah, Dolly. Where's Dolly? Dolly-dolly dear! Now I'll always have you near. Here's your heart, and here's your ear. Here's the knife, no need to fear…_

The thoughts became speech, and Sorrow felt a sharp pain in his right hand. He fought for control and regained it easily. His hand dropped a shard of his broken glass, leaving behind a dark smear of blood. The cut was deep, and his pain was no doubt dulled by the alcohol.

In his recklessness, he had opened his mind to the Devil. He would have to be more careful.

* * *

Historical Notes:

Although I don't explicitly say, the opening scene takes place in 1930, during both Prohibition and the Great Depression. Charlie means that he could sell his family's hidden wine on the black market.

I spent some time looking at real 1930 Cadillacs for this. One in particular was burgundy with a cream interior. I thought it would be very in-character for Alice to drive and for James to own.

All of the slang I've used comes from my great-grandmother. I can't say for sure that it's perfect 1920s/1930s slang, but at least it's what someone who would have been around at the time uses. I just love how she speaks!

Seat belts were not standard in vehicles until the late 1950s when Saab started making them standard.

Moskovskaya was a popular brand of Russian vodka during World War II. It is still around as a legacy brand owned by Soyuzplodimport.


	27. Royal Flush

Chapter 27: Royal Flush

* * *

The knock on the great mahogany door was sharp but polite, a resonating tap that Ellie heard from the parlor.

"I fold," her father said, laying a royal flush on the table. "You should get the door while I clean up. Such a cultured lady would never understand a father who plays cards with his ten-year-old daughter."

Ellie slipped her feet back into her dress shoes and straightened her silk gown. She bounced into the entryway and opened the door. A blond woman of indeterminate age in an enormous fox fur coat gazed down at Ellie. The woman's eyebrows were shaped into dramatic arches so that she always looked a little startled, but now she seemed quite alarmed.

"May I take your coat?" Ellie asked with the simpering curtsy her father had told her to use.

"Don't you have a butler?" the woman asked.

"No, Father doesn't want anyone - ."

"Why hello, Ms. Nostrum!" Ellie's father cried from behind his daughter.

"I'm using my maiden name again. It's 'Berksen'."

She dumped her coat unceremoniously into Ellie's arms.

"Ah, Ms. Berksen!" He nodded to Ellie, and the girl carried Ms. Berksen's coat to the hall closet. "Would it be impolite of me to call you 'Mina'?"

"It would be entirely impudent!" the woman snapped.

She glanced at Ellie who stood beside her father and curtsied again.

"Mister - ."

"Call me 'James', Ms. Berksen."

"James, if you think parading your little girl in front of me will change my mind, you are terribly mistaken."

"I see no parading. Perhaps it would be best to get out of our entryway and into my study. Ellie, if you could kindly bring us some tea…"

"No cook, either?" Ms. Berksen raised a sculpted eyebrow.

"Of course we do, but we had dinner over an hour ago. I'm sure she's home with her family by now. Let us retire to the study." He directed her by the arm into another doorway. As he stepped out of sight, he glanced over the woman's shoulder to wink at Ellie.

Ten minutes later, Ellie carried a small tray to the study door.

"… Even though my lawyer warned me not to meet with you like this." She heard Ms. Berksen's voice through the door. "Now I know times are tough for everyone, but as a single woman, I have no means to…" She sobbed noisily.

"You have misunderstood the whole time," James sighed. "Money is not important."

"_You_ say that!"

"Please, Ms. Berksen. Listen to me. This is about my daughter. There is no reason she should have to testify…"

"She was there! She survived! It's her _duty_ to tell me what happened to my husband!"

Ellie chose that moment to knock.

"Come in!" Ms. Berksen shouted.

"Wait!" her father called, but Ellie was already approaching the desk.

Strewn across the marble surface were four photographs. The one closest to her showed a dark pile of metal wrapped around the base of a tree. Ellie, struck with morbid curiosity, moved to the next photograph, one of a woman's arm and leg protruding from underneath the pile of metal. The shape was still indistinct, but Ellie made out the twisted door frame and the shredded tires of a car. The third picture was of a man lying with his head against an intact steering wheel, large shards of glass slicing through his body. Then, finally, she saw the last picture, one of blurry shapes that were vaguely human gathered around the scene. In the foreground, one figure knelt on the ground beside a person whose hand was the only part visible. That tiny hand clutched a tattered scarf.

"Oh, I'll just move these," Ms. Berksen said, gathering the photographs.

Ellie squinted at her. The woman had obviously meant for Ellie to see the pictures, and her father had tried to stop it.

"Bitty…," her father whispered.

"It's fine," Ellie said, and it was.

Her mother, the accident, everything was in the past. Unlike this woman who sat in her father's study, Ellie saw no value in dwelling.

* * *

The black slate of a world in which Sorrow wandered stretched endlessly in every direction – except down. It is difficult even for the soul to imagine a world with no floor. Pale shapes moved through the darkness, flat as paper. This was not a place – if it could even be called a place – Sorrow had ever come of his own power. He had always been brought here by a spirit, as if they each had a little confessional in this place where they could bring a medium to talk.

For days, he had searched for her among the voices he usually heard. He spoke to ghosts on the Queen Mary, the ship likely to have transported her to America. They told him in the vaguest terms that a woman soldier had been aboard and had spoken with a man on the deck whom she had called "Minister". Sorrow lost her trail after she had left the ship. She had disappeared as if the microbomb he knew she had implanted in her body had exploded and taken her soul with it.

During the first week in the hotel, Sorrow took an hour each day to eat, wash, and mark the day on his calendar. Finding the black world was like wandering a big, old house at night in search of a restroom; when you find it, you're not sure how you got there or how to get back, but at the moment, it doesn't matter. In that world, time was as meaningless as the other dimensions. The first time he remembered leaving the black world, he found an empty vodka bottle and half of a rotting sandwich on his bed. He shaved and wandered downstairs to the lobby.

"You look like hell," the bellman said.

"Thank you, sir," Sorrow replied wryly. "What is the date?"

"The twenty-second of December."

Sorrow went to the door to take a walk, but the cold knob in his hands froze him to the bone. He sulked back up the stairs, unwilling to face the windy chill.

Getting back to that world seemed harder than finding it the first time. When he arrived, the flat, indistinct shapes he had seen before looked more like people, moving past him at high speed as their forms stretched and morphed. Voices shot around him like bolts from Fear's crossbow. Then he walked a few steps, and the shapes solidified into people. These were ghosts trapped in places and memories. An old woman walked an endless staircase. A boy dragged his sled behind him, his face frosted with snow and blood. When Sorrow stopped, the people flashed past as they had before.

After Sorrow had passed hundreds of these ghosts, solid as any living person, he had the odd sensation that he had just entered a room. The space seemed empty at first, but then he saw a glimmer ahead like light through an open window at the end of a corridor. As he moved closer, he saw that the glimmer was mostly green, a lump of translucent olive drab against the black background. When he stopped, it did not move like the rest of the shapes, but rather new shapes flitted around Sorrow and the shape which he realized was the Joy.

She did not react as he approached. Her head rested between her knees which she had pulled to her chest. Her hair spilled over her knees and her hands which she had clamped over her ears.

"Joy!" Sorrow called, and Joy lifted her face contorted in a child's expression of terror.

"Mama?" she pleaded.

"No…" Sorrow reached for her shoulder, but his hand passed through her, distorting the image as if it were a reflection on water. "It's the Sorrow."

"Misha?" She squinted, lips slightly parted, as if she only vaguely remembered him.

Her image flickered, some parts coming in and out as if someone were tossing pebbles at her reflection.

"Yes!" Though his body was somewhere far away in a hotel room, Sorrow was certain it was crying the same tears he felt on his ethereal cheeks.

"Oh, Misha! They never came to get me out. I died."

"No! No, you did not."

"Yes. He said that they would get me out, but no one came."

"Who said?"

"Mr. Astrus."

Sorrow winced. Of course! Astrus must have sent her to America.

"He – he…," Sorrow began. Could he tell her that Astrus had set her up and was calling her a traitor?

"Where are you?" he asked instead.

"I was…," she said with a pained expression. "I was in New Mexico. To kill a man named von Neumann. I – I failed." She tore at her ghostly hair.

"How is our child?" the Sorrow asked.

"Child?" Her face aged suddenly as her eyes widened. "Dead! He must be! I – I'm…"

She flickered again, her face going dark for a moment, then brightening.

"No!" she cried.

"Joy! What's happening?"

"I don't – no!"

She clutched her abdomen which Sorrow noticed had suddenly swollen. Her soul had remembered the child. Joy reached toward him with a tortured scream which cut off abruptly with no echo. Sorrow stood alone in the black. The darting shapes had disappeared with her.

"Joy!" he shouted into the infinite nothing.

She was gone, but she must be alive somewhere; the child too. If she was alive, Astrus probably knew where she was. Sorrow tore himself away from the black world and awoke in a bright hotel room. The curtains were all open. Empty vodka bottles littered his bed. Plates of crumbs gathered flies on the table and windowsill. How long had it been since his last memory of the living world?

He stretched his cramped limbs and stumbled to the window. Snow swirled around the hotel, melting when it hit the window. It was still winter, at least. He touched his hand to the glass to feel the cold and remind himself that he was back in the world of the living. He saw his pale reflection dimly against the white snow; he was a different man. Blond hair grew thick on his chin and long on his head, and his clothing hung like a rain-soaked flag over his scrawny body.

Sorrow found some clean clothing, shaved, and packed a small bag. He considered cleaning the room for a moment but decided that finding Joy was more important than courtesy to the housekeepers.

"Ah, there's our resident hermit!" the bellman cried when he saw Sorrow walking shakily down the stairs. "If it weren't for your calls for more food and vodka every couple of days, we'd have had the undertakers up there to get you."

"Every couple of days?" Sorrow repeated. "How long have I been here?"

"Almost three months. It's the second of February."

"Where are my comrades?"

"The Pain's been gone for months, but the End and the Fury are still here, mostly come in by night. I figure you've finally emerged because you wish to speak to Astrus?"

"Yes…" Sorrow's voice was still gravely from disuse.

"I will call him immediately. You should wait in the bar."

"I think I have had quite enough to drink."

Sorrow heard the demanding "awooga" of a car horn in front of the hotel an hour later and ran to the door. Fury sat in the driver's seat of a polished Daimler coupe happily pounding on the horn until Sorrow climbed in.

"Figured it might be you," Fury said. "So you're ready to work with us?"

"I didn't say that."

"Don't be an ass. It was too goddamn generous of Astrus to put up with you this long. I'd have sent you back to a lab in Russia by now. God knows they keep asking for you."

"Good."

"What the hell were you doing all this time?"

"Nothing you need to know."

"What happened to the Sorrow who would give his goddamned puny life for me?"

"There's no Cobra Unit anymore."

Neither spoke for a few minutes as Fury sped down the road.

Then he said, "You talked to the Joy, didn't you?"

"No."

"You did. Why else would you lock yourself in a hotel room for three months?"

"She's gone."

"Of course she is, and you're keeping her to yourself as usual. You're one selfish shit."

"No. I mean… she was there, and then she was gone."

"Don't be so fucking cryptic, Sorrow. What do you mean?"

"I need to talk to Astrus."

"Ah, hell. Now you tell me. I thought I was driving you to Siberia."

"Fury… What are you doing for Astrus? I doubt you're just his driver."

"Nothing you need to know."

"Please…"

"You tell me why you've come back first."

"I think Joy may still be alive."

"Shit!" Fury shouted though Sorrow was not sure if it was an angry or joyful shout. "Why do you think that?"

"I answered your question. You answer mine. What is Astrus having you do?"

"Mostly some sabotage, a couple of kidnappings."

"Against the American Philosophers?"

"Does it matter?"

"They set her up, Fury. Astrus sent her on a mission in the U.S. and then lied to us about it. It wasn't for revenge. It wasn't for the Germans. Sabine almost had it, but she didn't know that Astrus was using her too."

"Fuck, Sorrow," Fear groaned, slamming a fist into the steering wheel. "When this war is over, whose side will you be on?"

"What?"

"The American Philosophers are hiding things from us. They've been pouring money into an anti-Moscow faction for the past few years. Their spooks are all over the Russian front trying to prevent us from finding any of the key Nazi research facilities before they do. When the war finally ends, despite the innumerable men who have given their lives for the Motherland, they will build themselves into the heroes."

"If it's true, and she is alive…"

"Then I will join you. My loyalty, above all else, is to that woman, but if you cannot prove to me that she is alive, I will continue serving the Motherland."

When they stopped at the country house a few minutes later, Fury bowed his head to Sorrow.

"Good luck, freak," he said and disappeared into the house.

Sorrow stood for another minute in the snow before Astrus opened the door jovially. "My, my Sorrow. You look like you need a good meal."

"We must speak privately."

Astrus nodded and led Sorrow inside. Sorrow noticed now that most of the men in the house spoke Russian but stopped as Astrus passed. They walked down the dim hallway toward the red room. It was even darker than before, and a section of the wall just in front of the room was covered in scorch marks.

As Astrus opened the door to the room, Sorrow said, "Not in there."

"It's the quietest room in this place."

"People can listen."

"They can listen everywhere, as I am certain you already know."

Sorrow followed him into the room and sat in the overstuffed crimson armchair.

"I must say it's a relief that you finally emerged," Astrus said, pouring himself a small glass from an unlabelled liquor bottle. "Would you like some?"

"No, thank you."

"Now Sorrow, my Russian isn't very good, so would you mind if we continued to speak in English?"

Sorrow shook his head.

"Good. Well, you've come to receive your first mission, then?"

"Actually, sir, I have come to speak of Joy."

"I'm certain you, of all people, know that she's long dead."

"She is alive. You know this, and you hide it."

"I assure…" Astrus looked around suddenly, suspiciously. He took a heavy blanket from the back of the couch and draped it over a large radio that stood on a table. Then he crouched as far from the radio as he could and motioned for Sorrow to follow.

With his hand cupped to Sorrow's ear, he whispered, "You caught me, old devil. I knew you would. It wasn't all me, you know. They wanted me to cover her failure. The Philosophers wouldn't want anyone to know that they sent an agent after their own government. She was originally supposed to make it look like an accident, but - ."

"But she is alive?"

"Yes. Only barely. She is in a hospital in Albuquerque under a fake name and heavy guard. But hear this, Sorrow. She is as good as dead. The bullet tore through her brain. Her body continues to function, helped along by machines, but she is unconscious, in a coma. I wouldn't be alarmed or disappointed if you helped her along a little when you see her."

"When I see her?"

"Yes, Sorrow. I'm sending you to that hospital, but it's not just for a visit. There is someone we need you to assassinate. I believe that your skills will get you into places we could never infiltrate otherwise."

* * *

Historical Notes:

Modern laminated glass (used in windshields) and tempered glass (used in other car windows) were not integrated into automobiles until the 1930s and 1940s. The accident in the story takes place during 1930, before these sorts of glass were used. Early laminated glass could break into shards that were quite dangerous in an accident.

I'm not exactly sure what the horn on a Daimler coupe sounded like. I couldn't find a sound sample, so I could be completely wrong.

By late 1943, tensions between the Soviet Union and Great Britain (and the United States) were high. The NKVD, the Soviet Union's secret police and intelligence, had a mole within MI6, Britain's intelligence, throughout the war. During the war and immediately following it, both the Soviet Union and America tried to get Nazi weapons scientists on their respective sides.

Prior to the D-Day invasions, much of the fighting was on the Russian front, which meant that most of the casualties were Russians. By the end of the war, this was doubly true despite the new front opened on D-Day.


	28. Sleeping Beauty

Chapter 28: Sleeping Beauty

* * *

"She's moving, Dr. LaSalle," a gentle male voice said.

"Probably another spasm. She sometimes responds to changes in the light, temperature, noise," said a woman whose voice was vaguely English. It reminded Joy a bit of her mother.

Perhaps the voice was her mother, and it was all a dream – the Cadillac, Charles and Mina – and now she remembered other things – England, a man named David, Camp X, the men she called "Cobras", a pale medium… Sorrow! She felt pain like a punch in the stomach rush to her brain, but she could not scream.

Her eyes flew open.

"Dr. LaSalle!" the young man cried. "She opened her eyes, Dr. LaSalle!"

The man was probably in his early 20s, but he looked no older than fifteen with long eyelashes framing blue eyes with oversized pupils.

A strangled gurgle was the only sound Joy could produce, but it was enough to get Dr. LaSalle's attention. The woman rushed to Joy's bed so fast that her glasses almost tumbled off her nose.

"My God!" the doctor cried, running a hand through her stylishly short brown hair.

She was only a few years older than Joy with a round face and brown eyes like the Fury's behind tiny gold spectacles. Her petite, manicured hand took one of the Joy's, and she smiled warmly.

"You'll be able to talk. You haven't used your voice in three months. Samuel, take out the breathing tube. Now swallow, Ms. Berksen."

Ms. Berksen! Why was this woman calling her by Mina's name?

Joy swallowed until she could scream rather weakly. Then she tried to form her lips into words.

"W – where?"

"You're in the hospital, Ms. Berksen."

"W-what h…" Joy could not form the "p". Her lips felt like leather stretched over the top of a drum.

"Relax," Dr. LaSalle cooed. "You were in an accident."

"N… n…" It was no accident. There were bullets. Gunshots echoed in the cramped stairwell. She had dived for a door…

"Samuel, go and get some water for Ms. Berksen."

The young man nodded his blond head and scurried out the door. Dr. LaSalle sat on the edge of Joy's bed and leaned over her.

"Now, Joy," she purred, "we can get some answers out of you."

* * *

The fourth of February was an unusually warm winter day near London, and the End leaned against a tree near the country house, sunning himself like a lizard. His rifle rested across his knees, gripped firmly in his wrinkled hands. The sniper's chest rose and fell with great, purring snores.

Fury knelt in the grass beside him. The End's parrot stared at him warily but did not speak.

"Wake up, old man!" Fury shouted.

"Grandpa! Grandpa!" the parrot screeched.

The End snapped awake, his eyes popping comically.

"Can't you let me rest?" he groaned.

"What if I'd been an assassin come to kill you, old man?"  
"Then my work on this earth would have been done, and don't you call me that, bastard-child!" Fury couldn't tell if the End was truly angry. The old sniper's face was so ancient that emotions hid within its wrinkles.

"Pain calls you that."

"He's different. Fury, do you miss the Cobras?" the End asked somberly.

"Don't get started on that again. You know I don't do sentimental shit."

"But don't you ever… wonder what the others are doing?

"Why should it matter to me?" Fury pulled himself to his feet and stared down at the old man.

"I thought, maybe… they're comrades."

"You've had a long life. We're like a blink to you. Why do you care so much?"

"The Joy."

"Fuck. Not her. Haven't we said enough about her?"

"I haven't said anything about her in weeks. Who else have you been talking to?"

"No one else. Astrus tells me damn next to squat, and the Russian lot are about as interesting as blocks of ice."

"But the Cobra Unit was different, eh? Better than serving in the Red Army, which is where you were headed when we took you in." The End's large eyes caught the noon sunlight. Fury thought he saw tears.

"Don't say it that way. You sound like you bloody adopted me."

"Not me. The Joy did. It might sound strange, but she adopted me too. Never had a commander like her. Nor a wife. Nor a mother. But somehow she's all of them combined."

"Sorrow thinks she's alive."

"You _did_ talk to someone else!" cried the End accusingly.

"He came here to talk to Astrus the other day."

"And you let him get involved in this mess?"

"I'm not his bloody mother!"

"You let him tell Astrus that he thinks Joy is alive?"

"Why are you still fighting with us? If you don't trust Astrus, then you can goddamn well leave!"

"And run back to Russia as a deserter? I'd rather you had been an assassin. If Sorrow shows up here again, at least make sure he talks to us first."

* * *

Dr. LaSalle caught the top of Joy's hospital gown in the crook of a finger. With the doctor's hand so close, Joy could see that, though the nails were clean and polished, her hands were rough. LaSalle pulled the collar down between Joy's breasts, leaving a white line where her fingernail scratched the skin. She bent over Joy as if about to kiss her. The doctor's warm breath tickled Joy's nose, but the soldier could not move beyond her eyes, lips, and the tips of her fingers.

"Do you know what this is?" LaSalle rubbed the fingers of her other hand around the edge of a disc-like bump under the skin just above Joy's breasts.

"Micro…" Joy stammered.

"It's a tiny but powerful bomb capable of destroying your body beyond recognition. Did they put this in you at the beginning of the war?"

"Yes," Joy said. Though pain still washed in waves through her head, speaking had become easier. She realized excitedly that she could move her toes, but she could not let the doctor see how quickly she was recovering. If she pretended that she was paralyzed, there might be a chance to escape.

"And who put this bomb inside of you?" LaSalle asked, stroking the disc tenderly.

"C-can't tell."

"I see. You do realize, don't you, that you were almost killed? If your heart had stopped, even for a moment, the bomb would have exploded, and - ."

The knob turned, and LaSalle straightened.

"I brought the water," Samuel said triumphantly.

"Ms. Berksen is still without the use of her arms. You will have to assist her in drinking it."

Samuel tipped the glass sloppily against Joy's parched lips, and the cold water ran down her face and neck. She did not flinch even as Dr. LaSalle stared hungrily at her.

"W-why…" Joy tried to labor her voice, but Dr. LaSalle was gazing at her with raised eyebrows. "Why… are you… c-calling me… M – M – Ms. B - ?"

"Please relax, Ms. Berksen. You have forgotten who you are." To Samuel, Dr. LaSalle said kindly, "Go and fetch Lucia. I need to give her a telephone message."

"You can give me the message." Samuel's face flushed to the edges of his ears.

"No, Samuel. I must give the message to Lucia."

After the door clicked shut behind the young man, Dr. LaSalle grasped Joy's wrist and lifted it to her lips. Joy did not tense the muscles although she was certain that she could. The strange doctor brushed her lips against the inside of Joy's wrist with a soft kissing sound. Then she ran the back of her fingernail down the cephalic vein that showed blue under Joy's skin. When Joy did not react, Dr. LaSalle made the same motion with her tongue.

Without turning her head, Joy tried to determine how the room was laid out. She was lying in a bed that came to Dr. LaSalle's waist. Dr. LaSalle was on her right side. The door was about eight feet from the end of the bed. On her left, Joy could see some sort of counter in her periphery, but it was unclear as if covered by a cloud. There were no windows; the door was the only exit. It was a solid-looking steel door that Samuel seemed to expend a bit of effort in opening. What was beyond it? The two times it had opened, Joy had seen a white wall opposite, probably a ten-foot wide hallway, but Joy was having trouble envisioning anything beyond what she saw outside the door. She knew, logically, that there ought to be a hallway, but somehow she could not imagine the hallway.

Dr. LaSalle lifted her face with an adoring smile. "I have always admired you, Commander," she whispered.

If Joy was going to escape, this was the moment. No use in spending any more time trying to determine where she was and how she had gotten there. Dr. LaSalle held her right arm, so Joy started with her left. She put all of her effort into making a fist, but the most she could accomplish was curling her index finger. Her right arm would have to do. She formed a fist easily and broke away from Dr. LaSalle. Joy lifted her head, which felt like it was carved from stone, and swung her fist at Dr. LaSalle's pretty round nose. Her blow landed, but Joy knew immediately that it had not dealt nearly enough force to break anything. Without stopping to recover, Joy swung her right leg off of the bed. The rest of her body followed, but instead of the graceful leap she had planned, Joy fell clumsily to the floor.

Dr. LaSalle grasped her tightly by both wrists and leaned down to spit every word in her face. "Until today, you were as good as dead, Joy. I kept you alive, but no one would know if I killed you right now."

She threw Joy back onto the bed, and Joy felt something move inside of her swollen abdomen. The child! She cursed her child silently but regretted it. It was a being fighting to survive just as she was.

"I don't want to hurt you," Dr. LaSalle growled, still squeezing Joy's wrists.

As she struggled to free herself, Joy realized how weak her body had become. The hope of escape had given her a burst of strength, but now her right side was almost as weak as her left. She collapsed against the pillow.

When Samuel entered with Lucia a moment later, Dr. LaSalle loosened her grip.

"We're going to have to keep a close eye on her," Dr. LaSalle said, nodding to indicate Joy. "She tried to escape."

"It's a miracle!" Samuel cried. "Can she walk?"

"Not yet, but it's only a matter of time. Could you please leave me to speak to Lucia?"

Samuel nodded and left Joy with the mad doctor, who had begun to look familiar, and the Mexican secretary.

"Lucia, call up Colonel Vincennes and tell him that sleeping beauty has finally awakened," Dr. LaSalle said in Spanish.

Joy realized with relief that she could still understand Spanish. Dr. LaSalle had made no move to use an anesthetic on Joy which meant they might want her to talk. Was she a patient… or a prisoner?

"In a short while," Dr. LaSalle said, straightening the sheets around Joy, "Colonel Vincennes will be here to ask you a few questions. Do not try to escape. Your body is not yet ready, and if you play games, I will see that it never is."

* * *

Dressed in a suit and groomed to the tips of his fingers, Fear looked almost respectable. He had arrived on a flight from a field in France, and an SOE car had just dropped him off in front of David's apartment in north London. The night was clear and bright, full of stars in the blacked-out suburb with a moon that hung low and bloated in the sky. David opened the door before Fear could raise his hand to knock.

The lieutenant appeared at the door wearing a purple robe and holding a glass of cognac. He looked at Fear with detached sadness.

"You look… tan," Fear said, catching himself.

"I only got back from North Africa a few days ago." David stepped back so that Fear could enter.

"You expected me." _So at least you could have gotten dressed, _Fear added in his head.

"I have already heard all about it." David was drunker than Fear had first suspected. He flopped splay-legged into an armchair, and Fear was disgusted when he saw for a moment that David had not even bothered to put on underwear.

"An entire Resistance circuit annihilated, you about killed, SOE all in an uproar. I swear she's like a typhoon."

"I'm sorry, Lieutenant Oh."

"Oh, hang it tonight! Call me 'David'. It's not your fault in the slightest. You did what you could. It's my blasted sister. I knew she would do this! When her radio operator gave her the message that Astrus had betrayed us, she replied with, 'B – bugger off!' Imagine saying that your own brother!"

Fear did not have a brother, but he imagined saying it to the Fury. Fury's response was a good deal more offensive.

"Have you tracked her down yet?" Fear asked.

"Of course we did. Unlike your commander, God rest her soul, Sabine leaves quite the trail. Apparently, after… the fiasco, she made contact with another agent of the American Philosophers, a U.S. Army officer, and left with him for the United States."

"They all seem to do that, don't they?"

"But it gets worse," David sobbed, downing the rest of his glass of cognac and reaching for the bottle. Fear took it swiftly and gently prized the glass from David's hand.

"How is it worse?"

"Astrus was just as irritated by her little display in Reims as SOE, so much so that it seems he sent an assassin after her."

"Christ! How long ago?"

"Yesterday. At least, that's what my mole with the Soviet Philosophers told me this evening."

"It's practically morning again, and I assume he meant yesterday when he told you. The assassin has a two-day head start."

"Yes, but I have you."

"You want me to find the assassin?"

"Don't get me wrong, Fear. SOE merely wants you to bring her back. I want you to kill the goddamn assassin."

* * *

Colonel Vincennes came to visit Joy late that evening. Dr. LaSalle made it obvious before he arrived that Joy was, in fact, a prisoner. She was too weak to fight as Dr. LaSalle competently and efficiently bound her to the hospital bed. It was demeaning for a soldier such as Joy, who had never been captured, and she half-prayed that her heart would stop just long enough to trigger the microbomb, preferably when LaSalle was nearby.

Dr. LaSalle sat at the end of Joy's bed most of the afternoon. Samuel seemed to have been sent away permanently, and the doctor offered to take care of any need Joy had herself.

Joy did not speak as LaSalle prattled about places she had visited in France and men she had met in Spain. Joy eventually concluded that the woman, while clever in her own right, was no doctor. She tried to imagine what the woman was, but her mind had trouble visualizing even the men she described. When LaSalle spoke of one man's sand-colored hair, Joy could see sand and hair but could not make the connection between the two.

Joy knew it was late in the evening when Colonel Vincennes arrived only because he told Dr. LaSalle in his gruff military voice that it was. He was tall and thick-necked with his hair cropped unattractively short. He immediately disappeared to Joy's left when he entered the room.

"I'm certain she is…," Dr. LaSalle said as she hopped down from the bed and crossed to the colonel. Then her words faded. Joy could hear her speaking, but the speech sounded foreign – like Russian or Chinese, two languages Joy had not yet mastered.

Vincennes spoke close to Joy in that same foreign-sounding tongue that was like English but not like English. It was now a bit more like Creole than Chinese.

His voice grew louder, angrier, and Joy fought to make out a few words: "Are… say? Can you… ?"

Dr. LaSalle whispered something, and they moved around the bed to Joy's right side. Now she could see Vincennes more clearly. He had gray eyes and an impatient mouth that frowned easily. He was frowning now as he looked over Joy's body.

"She's in worse shape than Lucia thought. Do you think tying her down was necessary?"

"She tried to escape, sir."

"And the baby…?"

"Is growing normally, sir."

"Good. Did you determine the father yet?"

"She has been uncooperative, sir. I told her that you would question her."

Vincennes sighed, and his frown deepened. "I'm a busy man. Now that I've taken care of my obligations here, I should be out in the Pacific. They were expecting me in Honolulu last week."

"I am not an interrogator, sir." Joy heard her voice quaver, but she had trouble reading the woman's expression.

"I don't think an interrogation will be necessary. I will interview her, but once I get the answers I need, she will be left in your charge. I have arranged for her to begin physical therapy, though seeing her now, I'm afraid she will never see battle again. Perhaps a job here in the States…"

"What in the hell is going on?" Joy asked, startling both Vincennes and LaSalle. "You treat me like a prisoner without telling me what I've done to deserve it, and then you talk like I can't hear you."

Vincennes eyes pierced Dr. LaSalle. "She seems entirely capable of understanding us, no matter what you say, _doctor_."

"I didn't imply - ."

Vincennes held up a hand to silence LaSalle. "Ms. Berksen, could you kindly tell me who you are?"

"Why do all of you call me by that woman's name?"

"I picked it," LaSalle said smugly. "Do you like it? I thought it might bring back memories."

This woman must be working with the Philosophers. Mina was long dead, but even among the Philosophers, few knew the details of her relationship with Joy's father.

"Would you rather I called you 'Ellie'?"

"My name is 'the Joy'. That's the only name I need."

"Ah, so Ms. Joy, what was an American agent of the Philosophers doing in a secret laboratory killing American soldiers, eight weeks pregnant at that?"

"Dr. LaSalle, settle down!" Vincennes barked. "She just awakened from a three-month coma. Keep the questions simpler."

Joy wanted to shout indignantly that she wasn't a child who had to be asked simple questions, but she did not want LaSalle to start talking again. The woman's voice made Joy's headache worse.

"Commander Joy," the colonel said. He was a soldier, but he could soften his voice like a psychiatrist. "What was your mission at the laboratory?"

"Mission?" Joy winced as she heard Dr. LaSalle's voice in her ears.

"Yes, Dr. LaSalle. Obviously a top agent like the Joy was manipulated into going to the lab. Someone gave her intelligence on it. She was in Europe the entire time it was being built."

Joy liked the colonel. He was logical and thorough, unlike the impetuous woman who reminded her more and more of the Fury.

"I would answer questions much better if you untied me."

"Dr. LaSalle, let her go."

The doctor stared at Joy sourly as she cut the knots. Joy tried to raise herself onto her elbows but couldn't. Vincennes moved her so that she could lean against her pillow. "What was the mission?"

"I was sent to assassinate a mathematician. John von Neumann."

LaSalle gasped.

Vincennes nodded dourly. "And who gave you this mission?"

"The Philosophers. Specifically a man named Mark Astrus. He and my father were old friends."

"Yes… We know Mark Astrus, and I'm not surprised that you trusted him. Unfortunately, it seems he has betrayed many of us. The mission he gave you was from the Soviet faction of the Philosophers, as was the entire mission in Germany. By my reasoning, it seems he and his superiors attempted to set you up as a German spy, send you here to kill a scientist they wanted out of the way, and get you killed in an attempt to escape. They even went so far as to notify the Army that there was an assassin."

"How do you know all of this?"

"I was the one who kept them from simply letting you die. The entire situation was suspicious from the beginning, and I knew who you were immediately. You see, I once met a seventeen-year-old pilot who loved her country very much but just happened to be female. You made an impression on all of us, and those of us who met you made one hell of a case for the WACs. Hell, even MacArthur said we ought to start drafting women."

His face glowed as he spoke.

"That's lovely, Colonel, but where am I?"

"You're in a hospital in Albuquerque. I went over to Europe last month to get the doctor before I was to head to the Pacific. I wanted to make sure one of the Philosophers' agents was here in case you awakened. What a pleasant surprise that you chose today!"

"When can I leave? My unit is waiting for me."

"Yes, well…"

"They're not dead?"

"No! Not at all. They have… well, it seems they were disbanded, and some of them, as suspected, joined the Soviet Philosophers."

"But they are technically our allies."

"Yes and no. Stalin is our political ally. The Red Army are our allies. The Soviet Philosophers have been hounding our operations all over the world. They have killed some of our agents, destroyed our safe houses and, as you witnessed, interfered in ways that question whether they ever want this war to end."

Her father had warned her that this would happen. The American and Soviet Philosophers were not on the best terms before the war, but now that Hitler was failing in the West, and the war in the Pacific was of no real concern to the Russians, the Soviets had finally decided to make the split official. A victory shared among the Allies was not as sweet as a victory for the Soviet Union and, consequentially, a victory for Communism.

"I can reunite the Cobra Unit," she cried. "I will find them."

"Commander Joy, according to the doctors, you will need physical therapy - ."

"I'm already able to move! Just give me a few days."

"And your brain has been damaged." Vincennes touched her just above her right temple.

"Dr. LaSalle, bring a mirror."

Joy lost sight of the doctor as she went to the counter on the left. It was a strange sensation, knowing logically that the woman was still in the room but not seeing or rather, not noticing her anymore.

Dr. LaSalle returned with the mirror and held it before Joy. The woman looking back had deeply-sunken features, protruding ridges of cartilage in her throat, and the hair on the right side of her head short and uneven. A two-inch gash of a scar crossed where Vincennes's fingers had touched.

"You were in a coma for three months because a bullet grazed your brain."

Dr. LaSalle spoke again, this time genuinely kind. "No doubt you are as clever as always, but there may be… deficiencies. Have you had any trouble recalling memories? Visualizing spaces? Understanding metaphor? Do you feel sad right now?"

Joy closed her eyes and lowered her head. She would get out of this hospital or die.

* * *

Historical Notes:

Yeah, yeah. You medical people out there can shoot me for the way Joy woke from the coma. I know it's not medically accurate, but it's the way it happens in fiction.

The microbomb… also not historically accurate or realistic in any way, but it's stated in the game that they had these miniature bombs in them.

The cephalic vein is the one that shows obviously on the inside of your wrist.

Most places in Europe were under a complete black-out at night during World War II to make it harder for enemy aircraft to navigate by sight.

General Douglas MacArthur really was quoted as saying that the WACs ought to start drafting women.

I tried to make my portrayal of trauma from a right-hemisphere brain injury as accurate as possible. I'm sure I messed up somewhere along the line.


	29. Easter Lilies

Chapter 29: Easter Lilies

* * *

The nurse checked her reflection in the side mirror of an old Ford as she passed. She had walked to the hospital from her small apartment four blocks away, and while the day was windy, the cold did not bother her. It gave her cheeks a lively glow that she was certain would turn heads in the hospital today.

Sorrow watched the nurse, who must have been at least forty, pat her rosy cheeks and straighten her cap. The parking lot was mostly empty this early in the morning, and the only people were the nurse and the Sorrow. If Sorrow wanted her spirit to cooperate, he would have to kill the nurse before she saw him. He approached silently from an angle so that she would not see him in the mirror. Joy had never made him kill. He had helped the other Cobras when they killed. He had even shot and wounded men, but now he had to kill an innocent woman simply for information she knew about the hospital. He had searched for someone already dead to give him Joy's fake name and the layout of the facility, but it was too new to have the spirits of workers attached. The only option would be to kill a nurse.

As Sorrow lifted his silenced pistol, he summoned the spirit of a hardened Red Army soldier. Taking on the spirits of the dead rather than simply listening to them was a new skill, but he had practiced since the times he had been possessed in Germany and Italy. In his everyday tasks, he sometimes allowed spirits into his mind to see how much control he could retain, and while it was still an imperfect art, Sorrow used this new power confidently without fearing that the spirit would steal his body.

He gave the soldier control of his hands, but his eyes saw everything – the aim, the bullet entering the nurse's skull below her white cap, and the steadiness of his hands while he watched the woman fall against the glass window and crumple the ground, leaving a smear of blood and brain matter down the side of the Ford. He ran.

From the bushes planted neatly around the front of the hospital, he watched for a few minutes. No one left the hospital. Sorrow heard the nurse's voice rise around him, high and indignant. As he had expected, she was preoccupied with her looks. She whined that there was blood on her uniform, that she might lie there all day and be a disgusting sight when someone found her. Sorrow interrupted her as she wondered whether the handsome Dr. Farren would go to her funeral.

The layout was second-nature to the woman who had to navigate its corridors sometimes in darkness when the hospital blacked out most of its lights in order to save electricity. Sorrow stored the layout in his mind and asked the name of the woman in a coma.

"You're the one who killed me!" the voice cried.

_No,_ Sorrow lied. _But she is my wife._ _I need to see her._

"If she is your wife, you should know her name."

The woman's spirit was weak, and under her words, Sorrow heard another, quieter version of her voice say, "Does he mean Mina Berksen? Didn't she wake up two weeks ago?"

Sorrow was startled for a moment to hear that Joy was awake, but he could not allow himself to believe it. If her injuries were as grievous as Astrus said… and yet it seemed right that she had awakened at the moment she disappeared from the world of the dead.

Sorrow had all of the information he needed, so he shut out the trilling of the dead woman's voice. He tucked the small pistol into a holster under his sweater and marched through the door of the hospital.

"Good morning, sir," a receptionist said dully as he entered. "May I help you?"

The lobby sparkled with modern utility. The floors were gleaming tile, virginally white without even a scuff. The couches where family members could wait looked futuristic and uncomfortable in blue leather. If there had not been a faint scent of ammonia in the air, it could have been a contemporary hotel.

Sorrow tried to sound like an American, but his Russian accent and limited knowledge of English could not even fool a weary early-morning receptionist.

"I am here to… see Mina Berksen."

"She isn't taking visitors."

"Hmm… I see… I… must see her. Is quite important."

Damn his English. He was out of practice, and his nerves did not help.

The woman squinted at him. The young man looked harmless enough with too-long blond hair, a high-collared black sweater, and a bouquet of white flowers. He was handsome enough, if a little skittish. Perhaps he was the father of Ms. Berksen's baby, having risked the perils of wartime travel to visit her from some faraway country.

"Where are you from?" Sorrow noticed a misty, far-off look in her eyes and decided to play on her fantasy.

"Cold Russia," he said, shivering to illustrate.

The receptionist giggled.

Sorrow continued, "Mina was my beautiful American lover, but her… her father hidded her… hides her… hid her. I travel the world to find her. We have a child together that is still inside her."

He hoped that was the story she wanted, and then he added, for emphasis, "I bring flowers… her favorite flowers."

The woman could not hide her blush. "In room 302, end of the third-floor hallway. There are often military men around. Be careful. Her father must be a powerful man."

Sorrow thanked her with a deep bow and found his way to the third floor. As he walked, he used the nurse's layout of the hospital to form an escape route. There was a shortcut to the outside just past room 302. He passed nurses bustling down the corridors in starched white gowns and a few doctors ambling between rooms. No one gave him a second glance. He had a talent for going unnoticed when he wanted to. Sometimes Marina would pass him reading under a tree three times as her cries of "Misha! Misha!" went entirely past him without being heard.

On the left was 311, 309, and finally 305, and then a pair of heavy-looking doors blocked the hallway. Sorrow pressed against one of the doors, but it was locked. Above the knob was a row of dials with numbers – a combination lock. Sorrow had not expected the hallway to be locked, and he hoped that he could still talk to the nurse. He found her still moaning that no one had found her body.

_What's the combination for the doors on the third floor?_ he asked.

"Why didn't you at least tell someone I was out here, murderer?" the woman said, but her subconscious rattled the numbers: _four, nine, nine, twenty-five. _

Sorrow shut her out again and tried the combination. The door clicked, and when he turned the knob, it opened on an almost-vacant hallway. A woman in a white coat and fashionably uncomfortable heeled shoes stepped through a doorway and into the hall. Without looking toward Sorrow, she clicked down the other end of the hallway and through another door. Although he could not see her clearly, Sorrow recognized the woman's walk. She was the person he had trained himself to think of only as "the target".

* * *

Fear spat in the brown grass before he stepped onto the smooth pavement of the hospital parking lot. Even the air here was gritty; the salty dust stuck to his tongue. The sparse bushes around the hospital offered nowhere for him to hide, and the windows looked reinforced. He would have to find another way in.

A faint odor filled the dry, chill air, and Fear saw congealed blood in a stream between the back tires of one of the few cars on the lot. He crept to the other side and gritted his teeth when he saw the body of a nurse leaning awkwardly against the driver's door. Blood matted her brown hair from the bottom of her cap to the nape of her neck. She had been shot from behind.

Fear heard a car approach and stop at the edge of the lot. A door opened and slammed, and the car puttered away. Fear peeked through the Ford's windows and saw a woman crossing the lot. He wished there were some trees, even an awning, for him to drop from, but at least he could grab her from behind. Fear sprang silently toward the woman until he could throw his arm around her neck and hold the tip of his crossbow under her chin.

"Madre de - !" she cried.

"Speak and you die," Fear hissed in Spanish.

She nodded and fell silent.

He dragged her behind the car and turned her head roughly so that she could see the body.

"See that?"

She nodded. "Anne…"

"That could be you. You don't want to die like her, do you?"

"No no no!"

"Then listen to me. I am your cousin who has come to visit from Mexico. You wanted to show me the hospital, understand?"

"Yes, I understand."

"Good," he grunted, tossing her savagely against the car so that she almost touched the body.

The Mexican woman crossed herself and continued toward the entrance.

* * *

Joy slept with her head cradled in a bleached white pillow when Sorrow entered room 302. In an uncharacteristic display of vanity, she seemed to be wearing her bandanna to disguise the wound he knew she had on the side of her head. She opened her eyes as he approached. The nurse had been right. She was awake.

"Joy," he said simply. She looked haggard under the hospital lights, and he wished she had a window in the room so that he could see her in the sun. It was like watching an animal in a zoo.

"Sorrow," she said wistfully, "am I still in a dream?"

She rolled onto her back, and the bulge of her abdomen was apparent through the sheets. Tears streamed unfettered down Sorrow's face, and he reached for her stomach. She took his hand in midair and grasped it with both of hers.

"How did you get in here? How did you find me?"

"I… I had ways." He lifted the bundle of flowers so that she could see it. "Easter lilies. The man at flower stand took all my money. He says the Japanese do not send… bulbs, I think."

"Yes. They grow from bulbs." Joy smiled at Sorrow's timid use of English.

"In old icon paintings," Sorrow said more confidently, "Gabriel brings the Easter lilies to Mother Mary."

Joy laughed, but it sounded strange echoing in the small room. "I'm no Virgin Mary." As she took the flowers in her hands, Joy saw the glint of a long, thin knife among the leafy stems. "In China, white is the color of death."

Sorrow had been blushing, but his cheeks were suddenly cold. He had killed today. With a white bouquet in his hand, he had killed a woman in a white dress. He would kill another in a white coat. Marina would have told him that it was all superstition. She was practical, "a future mother of many", their father would say proudly. Joy was not at all like Marina, but she lay in front of Sorrow, a mother in white.

Sorrow changed the subject. "Mina Berksen. It is a strange name."

"They put me under a fake name. Did the Philosophers send you?"

Sorrow swallowed. "Yes."

"You can't have come all the way here just to see me. What's your mission?"

"I – nothing. I wanted to see you."

"You're shaking." She laid the flowers on the table and took his hands to steady them. They were icy, as cold as they had been the night, four months earlier, when the RAF was bombing Berlin. "Sorrow, are you here to kill someone?"

"Yes," he sighed resignedly.

"Did you already kill someone?"

"Yes. To get your name and the layout of the hospital."

"Who?"

"A nurse."

"What was her name?" Joy's eyes gazed, steely and intent, at Sorrow.

"Anne." As he said her name, he understood that, though Anne Lucille Faberly still existed, in fact had only begun to exist, for Sorrow, she was gone in every other sense. She had an adult daughter, and her mother was still alive; she was gone for them. For the patients who expected Nurse Faberly to bring their morning medications, she would never come.

"Sorrow," Joy said gravely. "This is what it feels like to kill an innocent person. A soldier like you and me expects to die in battle, but it is sometimes necessary to kill others – scientists, women, even children. Don't dwell on their deaths, but remember their names."

He nodded. It seemed so easy when she said it – "don't dwell" – but though she called him a soldier, he felt like a child. His hand had pulled the trigger, but a real soldier had done the killing for him.

"I must go," he said. "I have been here too long."

He touched the bandanna, and though Joy lifted her hand to stop him, she dropped it with a smile. Her smile was different, Sorrow noticed as he slid the bandanna over her hair. The first time, he thought it was just a sign of fatigue, but now that she seemed wide awake, he realized that the weary smile did not spread beyond her lips. Even her lips seemed a little hesitant, unsure if they should dare to form a smile. Sorrow lifted the layer of hair that almost hid the scar and kissed the raised pink line across her scalp.

He folded the bandanna into his palm and tucked it in his pocket. "Do not cover your scar. You are like the Pain."

She stared at him, taken aback. Then her lips curled into another conflicted grin. "Have you seen the other Cobras?"

"One of them. Fury said that he will… join again if I bring… what is the word?"

"Would it be more comfortable if we spoke German?"

"Yes. Thank you. Proof. Proof that you are alive."

"So you took my bandanna?"  
"Yes."

"It means little to Fury, but I can give you something that will mean a lot more. Tell him that I said, 'Chao ni zu zong shi bad ai.'"

Sorrow repeated the phrase. "What does it mean?"

"He'll know."

"Joy. I really have to leave. Can you walk?"

"Yes." The word lacked her usual confidence.

"You are not going to escape?"

"You don't understand, Sorrow," she said like a teacher using him as an example.

"Don't you want to come back to your unit?"

She gave him a look of anguished pity, and Sorrow noticed again that she had the same eyes and cheeks as her mother.

"When I first awoke," she said, "all I thought of was escaping, but… I was wounded, Sorrow."

"You have been wounded before."

"This is different. It's not my body that's injured. I had to learn to walk. I had to _teach_ the muscles in my left leg to obey my brain again. I'm not ready to fight yet." It hurt her to tell him, but if she went back to the front now, she would only be a burden on the Cobras and a liability for the Allies.

"There is still a war to be fought!" Sorrow cried.

"Oh, Sorrow… if you reunite the Cobra Unit, I swear I will do everything in my power to return to you." She raised herself, and he could see that she move differently than before, like some of her body was slower to react.

Sorrow heard something metallic slam against a wall in the hallway.

"Go, Sorrow! I'll see you in Europe," Joy cried, pushing him away.

"If you need to defend yourself, there's a - ."

"I know."

Sorrow nodded and turned to leave. At the door, he looked back and saw the Joy feigning sleep, one arm covering the scar across her head. She may moved differently now, but she was just as quick.

He stepped casually into the hallway with this hand ready to draw his pistol. A Mexican woman and a lanky man were talking in front of the combination-locked door. Sorrow dashed the other direction, toward the room into which he had seen his target disappear. A plaque on the door read, "Ladies". A restroom. Sorrow drew his pistol and pushed the door.

* * *

Historical Notes

Although Easter lilies have been illustrated in Raphaelite paintings being given to Mary by Gabriel, I could find no record of them in Russian Orthodox icons. I just thought it sounded nice. "Icon" in the Eastern and Russian Orthodox churches means paintings of saints and Biblical figures.


	30. Animals

Chapter 30: Animals

* * *

To every person he met inside the hospital, Fear was Lucia's rather vulture-like cousin. With his long coat, greasy hair, and pointed nose, he could have stood in for Julius Streicher's stereotypical Jew. He spoke Spanish to Lucia, and the Americans, unable to distinguish the accent of southeastern Spain, assumed he was Mexican.

He pushed the locked door on the third floor. "What's the code?"

"I don't know."

"Of course you do. You work here, don't you?"  
"Why are you here?" she asked with an accusatory glare.

"To visit someone."

"Couldn't you have gone to the front desk and asked?"

"She doesn't want to see me."

"Going to do to her what you did to the woman outside?"

"That's right. And you too if you don't open this door."

Lucia, who looked like she was about to say something insulting, turned to the lock and chose the combination. She held the door open and bowed for Fear to go first, but he pushed his hands against her round behind and shoved her in front. She seemed slightly delighted for a moment but then glared at him sourly. Fear would have laughed if he had not seen a thin man with a head of pale blond hair hurry out of one of the rooms.

"Which room is Dr. LaSalle's patient in?" Fear demanded.

"Oh God. Don't hurt her!"

"I'm not going to. Is it the room that man just left? Don't look at him! Is it?"

"Go check yourself," she spat.

Fear glanced down the hallway. The man was pushing another door now. Damn Astrus for sending the Sorrow! Damn him straight to the deepest circle of hell! Fear grabbed Lucia by the front of her blouse and threw her headfirst into the wall. She slumped to the floor with a trickle of blood running between her eyes, but she was alive.

Fear shot down the hallway after Sorrow and prayed to Lucia's God that he wasn't too late.

* * *

The restroom was lit brightly by blue-tinted lamps on the ceiling. Sorrow's target stood at the sink with her back to him, but he knew it was Sabine DeMille. He stepped closer, and she bristled. They could see each other in the gleaming mirror. This was not a bathroom that was often used. Sorrow reached back with his left hand and turned the lock that the cleaning crew used to keep out patients and visitors.

"The Sorrow," Sabine said, watching him in the glass through her tiny spectacles. "The Soviets or my brother? I'm assuming the Soviets because you have a gun."

Something heavy slammed against the door with a muffled shout.

"Better finish me. Right in the back of the neck like a good comrade." Sabine lifted her hair to show the nape of her neck.

The person outside pounded on the door, and Sorrow realized that the shout was his own name – his code name – over and over.

"Before you kill me, Sorrow, tell me how Astrus convinced you to come after me. Did he tell you that I caught his French mole in Reims? Or did he just have to say that your American whore was here in my care?"

"_Suka!_ Bitch!" Sorrow shouted, shooting one of the overhead lights. It shattered, sending milky blue shards of glass into a rain around Sabine.

For the first time, he wanted to kill.

"You _are_ the father, then," Sabine purred, regaining her composure. Blood dripped onto her white coat from a cut on her cheek. "I could never get her to tell me. Your comrades certainly thought you were, but it's nice hearing it from you. Tell me, Sorrow, is she nice to fuck?"

Sorrow squeezed the trigger but switched his aim to the mirror behind her. She screamed again as it shattered into the sink.

Sabine breathed heavily and stared at Sorrow with a defiant smile. "You don't really want to kill me, do you? You almost killed her, you know. If it weren't for the baby, she would have let the bullet hit her gut." Sabine was almost delirious with rage as she screamed, "How does it feel to bring down the Philosophers' best operative?"

"Do not be so arrogant!"

"Not me, you idiot! The Joy! You've practically destroyed her, the woman I admired, lying in a hospital bed with _your_ child in her womb!"

Sorrow spoke calmly and deliberately, "Sabine, I do not want to kill you, but Astrus gave me that mission to complete. I killed a nurse in the parking lot, and I would do it again if necessary. Now I'm going to shoot out that window. I want you to jump. I don't care if you break both legs. If you don't jump, I will shoot you where you stand."

Sabine seemed docile, almost hypnotized. She nodded somberly. The change in her attitude was abrupt, and Sorrow suspected that she really was afraid to die. With another bullet, he destroyed the window, which was made from brittle decorative glass.

As Sabine threw a leg over the glass-covered sill onto the ledge Sorrow had seen running below the windows on the third floor, she turned back for one more insult. "I knew you wouldn't shoot me, coward. You don't deserve her."

Almost involuntarily, Sorrow's finger, which he had left irresponsibly on the trigger, curled. He heard the report, Sabine's tortured scream, but he had already fled for the door. He burst into the hallway, prepared to kill whomever stood in his way, but it was empty except for the Fear who reacted to Sorrow's sudden appearance by raising his crossbow.

"What the hell did you do, Sorrow?" Fear's voice shook, but his hand was steady, ready to kill.

"What I had to do." Sorrow realized after he spoke that he was baiting the Fear, so he added, "I did not kill her. I would know if she was dead."

Sorrow brought his pistol to his side, and Fear lowered his crossbow only slightly.

"Don't you find it strange," Fear said, "that with all that noise, no one has come up here to investigate, like they were warned that you would come?"

"I am sure it will not stay that way. I must leave, and you too. Take Sabine and leave."

"I'll bet the Joy is laughing somewhere because you didn't finish your mission."

"She is here."

"You mean you've been talking to her?" Fear eased his grip on the crossbow.

"She is alive, in this hospital."

"Then why aren't we getting her out?"

"She wants to stay. Please, take Sabine. She may be injured. I will meet you in London."

The combination door swung open with a chorus of shouts, but Sorrow scurried the other direction, through the short cut Anne had used to take quick breaks on nice days. She may have been a vain woman, but the dusty breezes of Albuquerque comforted her.

Fear darted into the restroom, and although he had heard the noise muffled through the door, he was startled by the destruction Sorrow had caused. Blue- and silver-coated glass covered the tile floor, accented by drops of fresh blood. He heard someone groan and ran to the window. The wall under the jagged shards was streaked with blood.

On the decorative ledge that ran around the outside of the third floor, Sabine lay in a once-white coat, her body arched in agony. One of her bloody hands was clamped over a wound below her right knee.

"That filthy Communist FUCKER!" she screamed. "He shot me!"

Fear climbed carefully onto the ledge through a frame of broken glass. If anyone from the hospital saw him, they would immediately assume he was responsible for the mess in the restroom.

"Get on my back, Sabine," he said, gripping the wall below the ledge. He had never scaled a wall with another person on his back, but at least they were going down instead of up.

"Thank you, Fritz," she sighed, and she slid her legs around his waist, wincing as her wounded leg brushed his wool coat. She curled her arms around his shoulders rather than his neck – she had been carried before.

Their progress was slow, but this part of the building had blessedly few windows. Fear felt Sabine's labored breath as she pressed her face into his collar. Pain was right – she was nothing like the boss, but she made him feel a measure of masculine bravado. He did not have to threaten her, and yet she gave him respect, not the respect between comrades that he got from the boss but the respect of a woman to her husband. Still, he wondered if this Sabine was the true Sabine. Her personalities changed abruptly, like costumes in a fool's play. Which Sabine had Sorrow shot?

Fear dropped on all-fours to the ground, and Sabine rolled off of him. Police cars swarmed the parking lot, but Sorrow was gone, probably in one of the Soviets' nondescript cars on his way back to the train station. Fear hefted Sabine into his arms and fled to the safe house.

* * *

Sorrow's driver spoke only Croatian, so they spoke little aside from the few simple phrases the man had learned for getting around in America. Already, Sorrow regretted showing so much emotion. He understood what the Fury must feel – anger to the point of anguish and a desire to take revenge if only on the nearest inanimate object. The sounds of his gunshots and the shattered glass tinkling against the tile floor had been somehow therapeutic.

Sabine had provoked him. Did some part of her want him to kill her? Or did she hate him so vehemently that she was willing to die for her hatred? He had only met Sabine once before, but even then he had been hesitant to trust her. It was as if every action she made was calculated to get the precise reaction she wanted.

Sorrow hoped that Fear could at least keep her out of sight until they all reached London.

* * *

"Good," Astrus said stolidly. He leaned forward in his chair with his elbows resting on his knees and his hand folded under his chin. It was a casual pose, but to Fury, he looked like a tiger prepared to pounce.

The pair met in Astrus's office at the country house, probably once a nursery – the walls were painted with a mural of anthropomorphized animals at a picnic. Astrus had covered much of the image with colorful posters advertising appearances of "The Astounding Astrus" now long past, but most of the mural was still visible in greens, soft blues, buttery yellows, and the grays and browns of animal fur. It was painted with the detail of the best children's picture books, meant to inspire the children of the baron who had once lived here. A pair of cats shared a sandwich while a party of birds fought over the crumbs they had dropped. Even the ants had their own picnic laid – only inches high – using a four-leaf clover as a blanket and an acorn hat as the merry-go-round for child ants.

The animals had human expressions made almost carnal by their wild features. A gray fox watched a pair of red foxes in Victorian dresses with parasols from the bushes. It was probably the artist's intention to make him look forlorn, but the grin that never quite disappears from a canine snout betrayed his hunter soul. The Fear would have loved the mural – or perhaps hated it – for the surreal combination of beast and man in the expressions. To Fury, it was ghastly.

Astrus sighed as if he were throwing a heavy load from his shoulders. "Over two years with them in the war, and the Americans, with all their talk, have failed to open a true European front."

Fury nodded grimly. "But they're more concerned with the Pacific."

Astrus dropped his hands to his knees and pushed himself up.

"That's a naval battle," he snapped. "They have a large military. And don't try to say anything about Italy. The Italians practically won it themselves before the Yanks even noticed Mussolini was part of the Axis."

The old magician plucked a corner of his silver mustache. He pulled a few bristly hairs away and flicked them onto the floor. His jolly demeanor had faded in the months since Fury first met him in France, leaving instead a scornful, caustic humor that was not meant to inspire laughter.

"You sound like a man with a goddamn plan, Astrus," Fury muttered. He loved the way English curse words rhymed so musically.

"Their problem," Astrus said, standing suddenly, "is that they feel so little urgency. The war is in Europe. The war is on the Pacific islands. Women on the home front aren't taking up arms against the Nazis. They're just baking with less sugar. They don't know how it feels to be _invaded_."

"You're not bloody serious?"

"Have I told you how well you speak English? You've really got the _timbre_ of our colloquialisms - ."

"None of your shit, Astrus. You brought me up here to tell me about it, so tell me."

"How much do you know about Mexico, Fury?"

"The Krauts tried that during the Great War and landed on their asses."

"Old Zimmerman only failed to convince them because it was obvious the Germans had no means to support Mexico in an invasion. We do. Thousands of Communists could take weapons onto passenger ships and join the Mexicans before the Americans and their British bulldogs had any idea. They wouldn't sink an Allied vessel."

"Sounds like a great way to burn a hell of a lot of money."

Astrus smiled, not a comforting smile but the vicious grin of a guard dog. "Very soon, money may be of no real concern for us."

A military-disciplined knuckle rapped on the door. Astrus sat behind his desk and nodded to Fury who opened the door with a gentlemanly bow. The American man who stepped stiffly into the room was hulking and dark-skinned with close-knit eyebrows that gave him a constant look of pain. He snapped his eyes immediately toward Astrus and saluted like an American.

"Message for you from Washington, sir!"

"Yes, Briggs?" Astrus asked with a single eyebrow raised.

"Snake Charmer was seen at the Rose Garden last night dining with a strange man."

"Who sent the message?" Astrus asked, resting his chin against his thumbs.

"Mask, sir." Fury knew this was a code name for a high-society woman who often sent messages about American politicians and the various ambassadors who lived in her nation's capital.

"Did she give a description of the man?"

"'Strange' was her word, sir. She said he was tall, thin, dark, strikingly unattractive."

_Fear,_ Fury thought with a hint of relief. He did not let the feeling linger.

"Thank you." Astrus dismissed the American with a nod and turned to Fury. "It seems your friend Sorrow failed."

"He's not my friend…," Fury grumbled, but Astrus ignored him.

"Sabine is alive, as I suspected. Blood and broken glass and discharged casings but no body. I didn't want to tell you until I was certain, but now we know that Sorrow never completed the mission."

"What will you do to the… him?" Fury's first instinct was to call Sorrow a "useless bastard", but he held back.

Astrus laughed. "Nothing. He'll be brought back here. Sabine wasn't important anyway. It was a test for the Sorrow."

"What the hell do you mean?"

Astrus stood and turned his back to Fury, stretching his muscular arms over his head. "In the end, he did kill someone."

He studied one of his posters intently.

"Who?" Fury asked quietly.

The magician did not answer, did not even turn back to Fury.

"Who did he kill?"

"It wasn't part of his mission," Astrus said to the poster.

"Who the _fuck_ did he kill?" Fury stood so fast that his chair tipped with a crash to the hardwood floor.

Astrus brushed a finger across the face of his younger self on the poster and then took his cloak and hat from the rack by the door.

"It was no one important. Let's head to London," he said, tossing the cloak over his broad shoulders.

* * *

The Joy sat across from the brown-haired young man called "Pyro". He wore the crisp, clean winter uniform of an NKVD officer, but his face was sunken like a prisoner's. He glared across the table at her with dark mahogany eyes, and ran a hand through his sweat-streaked hair.

"Your name is Ilya Yezhov?" she asked in Russian.  
The man answered in a growl, and Joy looked at her translator, a thin man with a long chin who looked a little like a wasp.

"He says that his name doesn't matter. Everyone calls him 'Pyro' anyway, and so should you, stupid c – ." The translator stopped and looked down at his feet.

"It's okay," Joy said. "I understand."

"And I can fucking understand English!" the man shouted as he slammed his hands on the table and stood.

Joy noticed that the other officers in the room had moved toward Pyro as if to seize him but stopped.

"I'd rather speak English so that these pigs can't understand," he grunted. "So what do you want from me, bitch?"

His wrists were crossed with red lines mostly hidden by the tight cuffs of his jacket – rope burns. Joy stood and returned the man's glare.

"I want to get you the hell out of here," she said.

* * *

The charcoal remains of Joy's father's home stood black against the darkening sky. A sign at the end of the wooded drive had marked the property as "sold" and Joy wondered vaguely who had been paid. A crane stood like a sentinel over the grand house, ready to complete the demolition begun by arsonists. Joy imagined that some young family had bought the property. As their children grew up in the new house, their friends would call it a "murder house" and ask for tours as if they would find new clues.

Part of Joy's mind expected Astrus to step through the blackened front door and give some thin explanation for his presence, but no one appeared. She was alone on the green hill in a new dress the color of budding leaves. A cold late-April wind lashed her ponytail against her bare neck. After she left the hospital, there was not time to have a uniform made to fit over her new body, so Joy had bought a loose dress.

She knew that she should be crying, but no tears fell. Instead of sadness, Joy felt only a murky sensation that something had been lost, like searching your house for something only to forget what it was. She wondered why she had come here at all. Her father's grave would have been more appropriate, less painful.

Her Philosophers contacts in Kitty Hawk seemed trustworthy, an old couple whose large house had once been part of the Underground Railroad, but she wished the Fear were here to make certain. Pain and Fury would stand with her on the hill and feel the anger she couldn't. Then, as Sorrow took her hand, the End would muse on the transience of life, something of a eulogy. Joy smiled, glad that she could imagine her unit again after months of struggling just to call their faces to mind.

With a solemn salute, she turned away from the ruined house. She would see the Cobras again in less than a week.

* * *

Historical Notes

Julius Streicher was the publisher of the anti-Semetic newspaper _Der Stürmer_. Cartoons published in the paper portrayed Jews with long, hooked noses and angular faces.

"Suka" is Russian for "bitch". Yes, it is used as an insult.

There are so many Slavic languages that there's no way to know them all. Sorrow speaks Russian and doesn't understand Croatian. I chose Croatian because I work with a man who told me one day that my husband's nickname "Misha" means "mousy" in Croatian. He was thoroughly convinced that it was like that even in Russian though it isn't. The nickname exists in both his language and Russian but it means different things.

By 1943, Stalin was frustrated that the Americans had not opened a front in France. This was one of many factors that led to the breakdown of diplomatic relations between America and the Soviet Union.

When Astrus says that American women are backing with less sugar, he is referring to rationing on the home front during World War II.

One of the events that led to the U.S. entering World War I was the interception of a telegram from Arthur Zimmerman to the German ambassador to the U.S. which was then forwarded to Mexico. The telegram urged Mexico to invade the U.S. and promised that the German Empire would help. Mexico declined the proposal. Today, some believe the telegram was not meant to be a serious proposal at all.

NKVD was the predecessor to the KGB. They were the secret police of the USSR from 1934 to 1954.

For my non-U.S. readers, I should probably explain the Underground Railroad. The southern states kept slaves for many years after our nation was founded, but there were many people who did not agree with the idea of keeping people as slaves. Those people helped form an escape route for slaves. We call this the "Underground Railroad". Often houses on the Underground Railroad had secret rooms or second basements hidden beneath the normal basement. They could hide escaped slaves and give them food before sending them to the next house.


	31. Burnt Bridges

Chapter 31: Burnt Bridges

* * *

A week earlier, the End's chest rose and fell slowly as he napped at the crest of a small rise. From his position, he could see most of the forest that surrounded the country house on two sides. As if he had invisible roots that stretched over the entire forest, the old sniper felt a movement on its western edge and awoke. He leaned forward and laid a withered finger along the trigger guard.

The vibration continued toward him, impossible to pinpoint but definitely moving closer. Then it stopped. A blackbird coasted low over the End's head, and his parrot watched it land on a budding shrub with one bulging eye. The sniper's hands were cold with sweat as he pulled away from the sight to scan the forest.

* * *

As Sorrow pushed through a thick wall of tangled trees lashed together by vines, he felt nausea wash over him like cold water. Screams rose around him as they had on the train in Germany. Fourteen men and one woman, all shot and buried last November in this forest. A line of brush-covered bumps crossed the floor in front of him. As he stepped carefully between two graves, Sorrow heard one voice over the others.

"Wait!" it cried. "There is a sniper in the woods."

The voice was male, slow and drawling. He was an American.

The sniper would be the End. Without proper camouflage, Sorrow would have to approach warily.

* * *

Something black fluttered between the bushes, and the End tensed. It was at the level of a man's shoulder, but he had to be sure it wasn't another blackbird before the report of his rifle revealed his position.

* * *

A parrot rested on the peak of a pile of leaves. He seemed to defy gravity, but Sorrow knew that he was perched on the End's head.

"Grandpa!" the parrot cried, and with a low groan, the old man, quick as ever, turned his moss-covered rifle toward Sorrow.

"_Privyet, tovarishch_," Sorrow said quietly. "Hello, comrade."

The End dropped his rifle.

"Judas Iscariot!" he exclaimed, throwing his arms around Sorrow's thin body. "I could have shot you!"

"But you wouldn't have killed me." Sorrow raised his eyebrows.

"Still…," the old man muttered. He shrugged the ghillie suit off of his shoulders and gazed at Sorrow with a nostalgic gleam in his eyes. "Are you here to see Astrus?"

"No. I would be content never to see him again."

The End looked away down the low hill toward the ivy-covered walls of the country house. "Hmm…," he said. "I was supposed to arrest you if you said that. Of course, that was only if I didn't shoot you first, which never would have happened." He gave Sorrow a grin missing a few teeth.

"I suspected Astrus would want you to do that."

The End chuckled. "Not Astrus. The Fury. But I've never really been one to take orders from that kid, so give me a good reason to let you go free, and I will."

Sorrow's eyes widened as if he had some great secret. "The Joy is alive," he said in a hushed, excited voice.

The End frowned, loose skin around his mouth dropping forlornly over his beard. "Fury told me you reckoned she was."

"I saw her. Astrus sent me to America to… on a mission, and I saw her in the hospital."

"Hospital?" the End cried too loudly for Sorrow's comfort. He heard a dog bark a reply in the distance.

"She was hurt. Quite badly. She could walk, though - ."

"Of course she could," the End snapped.

Sorrow realized that no description of her injuries could explain why she hadn't returned with him. Her unit assigned her superhuman strength. Telling them that she had been almost lifeless in the hospital for three months would be harder than saying she was dead.

"She could not leave," Sorrow continued, "but she said that she would meet us once I reunited the Cobras."

"Astrus sent you on the mission?"

"Yes."

"You could be lying about all of this."

The End did not trust Astrus. Sorrow could see it now. The old man was waiting to be convinced that Sorrow was more trustworthy than the magician.

"He also gave Joy a mission," Sorrow said.

The End's eyes bulged. "When?"

"When we were all in Germany. She disappeared in the night. Then he brought us back here. All of that was his plan."

"I suspected…"

"Of course you did, and you've been helping the American Philosophers."

Pale pink rose in the old man's hollow cheeks. Then he tensed, his entire body suddenly alert. "There's a car approaching."

* * *

Fury fumed in the driver's side of the blue Daimler coupe. Two days in London and nothing but meetings. God, at least Joy got things done! He did not slow the car as they approached the driveway.

"Don't you think we ought to slow down a bit?" Astrus suggested nervously.

Ignoring him, Fury jerked the wheel, and the car turned with a screeching lurch on the dirt driveway. Astrus threw his hands against the dash to steady himself.

"Fury!" he bellowed. "What the hell's wrong with you?"

Fury pulled the car into the garage and parked before speaking. "Am I just going to be your goddamn driver forever? Sit around like your bodyguard while you talk to diplomats and shit."

"See here!" Astrus shouted, leaning toward Fury until his mustache almost brushed the younger man's nose. "I told you all about the Mexico plan!"

Fury slid out of the car and slammed the door behind him. He heard Astrus's door open.

"But you made me wait two days before you would tell me what the hell happened with the Sorrow!" Fury grunted.

"Not so loud!"

"Speak of the Devil…," said a small voice from outside.

Sorrow stood on the stone walkway just outside the door.

"Sorrow!" Fury called. "How the hell - ?"

Astrus stepped between them, once-cheerful eyes staring coldly at the Sorrow.

"You weren't at the hotel." Astrus's voice was low and suspicious. Sorrow stepped back and tripped over a paving stone. As Sorrow fell, Astrus walked through the doorway toward him. Fury heard the crack of a Mosin-Nagant as the End's dart struck Astrus's neck. Sorrow saw his eyes widen in rage for a moment before he toppled onto the pavement. Then he flitted around Astrus's unconscious body and threw himself into Fury. They tumbled into the grass still wet with dew, and before his comrade could say a word, Sorrow gagged him with Joy's bandanna.

The End, rifle slung over his shoulder on a leather strap, took one of Fury's arms. He and Sorrow dragged their struggling friend behind the garage. Sorrow held up his hand to indicate silence and loosened the bandanna. He reminded himself to wash it before giving it back to the Joy.

"What the hell was that about?" Fury hissed.

"Quiet!" the End snapped in a barely audible voice. "We only have a few seconds before they find us."

Fury narrowed his eyes and spat, but he nodded.

"Joy is alive, and I'm reforming the Cobra Unit," Sorrow whispered.

"Proof?"

"She told me to tell you, 'Chao ni zu zong shi bad ai.'"

Fury took Sorrow roughly by the collar, but realizing that his comrade did not understand the phrase, he let go.

"That bitch," he grumbled.

"What does it mean?" Sorrow asked.

"It's - ."

The End looked up suddenly, and Fury stopped.

"Tranquilizer…," they heard a voice say in Russian.

Then a younger voice muttered, "The End…"

Sorrow and the End stood, ready to run. A man appeared at the corner of the garage, and Sorrow was certain he must have lied about his age to join the army. He looked about fifteen, hair short and dark, nose long and German. His eyes and Tokarev pistol were focused on the End.

"You were the traitor!" the boy whispered with incredulous eyes.

"Dmitri…," the End replied. He did not reach for his side arm, but as the boy fingered the trigger, Fury drew his own and fired without hesitation.

The boy gasped and stumbled, and Fury fired three more times. The bullets tore through the boy's faded Red Army uniform, leaving dark rings of blood. The second man rounded the corner, already firing.

"Run, you bloody asses!" Fury shouted. "I'm coming. I'll cover you."

The three Cobras raced toward the woods, Fury running backward with surprising grace even as a bullet passed very close to his ear. The second soldier fell, but they heard more shouts near the house as they reached the cover of the trees.

"It would be more effective if they filled the forest with snipers," the End mused.

"Right now," groaned Fury, "I'm damn well happy you didn't suggest it."

* * *

The field was golden with barley rolling like waves against the blue sky. The Pain, in all black, crouched to knock the chaff from the radiator of the gas-powered harvester. Fuel was scarce, so Pain shut off the wooden monster flecked with peeling red paint while he cleaned.

The sun was bright, and though Pain could not feel its warmth on his skin, the color of the light reflecting the barley warmed his mind and promised summer. The war was far away, and the only reminders were a fuel shortage and the absence of Mr. Sinclair, head of the family and pride of his wife and daughters. Mrs. Sinclair had been happy to have a worker as strong and loyal as Pain, even if he looked a little strange. She had fixed him up in a cottage overlooking the stone farm house. When she heard that he kept bees, she gave him wood for an apiary in exchange for honey.

Pain gazed over the field, calculating how many acres he could finish before sunset. Two voices like jingling bells drifted over the barley. He could not hear the words, but he knew the tiny voices well.

"Mister Payne! Mister Payne!" they cried in unison as they came closer.

A pair of straw-colored heads bobbed toward him across the field.

"I'll say it!" one shouted.

"No, me!" the other protested.

They skipped into the flattened field behind the harvester, twin girls in braids and gingham dresses.

"Mister Payne," the one named Mallory said proudly, and her sister Mary finished with, "There's a strange man here to see you."

The feeling of warmth left Pain's body. "No rest for a soldier," he had once said. The war had found him, even here in Scotland.

"What did the man look like?" Pain asked as he followed the girls to the house. He had to decide whether to stop at the cottage for his gun.

"He has white hair - ," Mary began.

"It was blond," Mallory interrupted.

"Looked white. And his eyes were all white too."

"Were not!"

"And he had a long, black coat."

"He said, 'I most see da Pain,'" Mallory said in a deep voice.

"Did he wear eyeglasses?" Pain asked.

"What?" The twins had never seen glasses.

Pain formed his hands into circles in front of his eyes. "Eyeglasses. Little silver things sitting on his nose."

"Yes!" both girls exclaimed.

Pain considered the Colt hidden in the drawer under his wardrobe. Since the Cobras had disbanded, the Sorrow could be on any side.

Mallory stopped abruptly in front of Pain. "You're leaving, aren't you?"

"I don't know."

She and her sister had freckles and hazel eyes – nutty brown rimmed in olive. Pain pushed the gun from his mind; he would trust his comrade as Joy would have wanted.

"Mummy really needs you right now. It's harvest, and she doesn't like Tess to go out on the combine," Mallory continued, running to keep up as Pain quickened his stride.

"Are you going to fly an aeroplane?" Mary asked with heartbreaking innocence. "Going to fly it against the Germans like the Red Baron?"  
"The Red Baron _was_ German," Mallory sighed.

Pain ducked through the low doorway of the farm house. Even in the gloom of Mrs. Sinclair's kitchen, Sorrow's skin and hair almost shined like moonlight through white curtains. His face was dour, and he still wore his coat. Mrs. Sinclair started, as she always did, when Pain entered. The eldest daughter Tess stood beside her, red-haired and built like a draft horse but with a slightly frightened look that reminded Pain that she still saw him as dangerous.

Sorrow stepped forward, a smile in his eyes and a handshake waiting for his comrade, but Pain did not take his hand.

"Why are you here?" Pain glared at him, coal black eyes against the pale rectangle of skin that showed through his balaclava.

Mrs. Sinclair glanced at Pain fearfully and ushered her children outside.

"I need your help," Sorrow said in German. "The End and the Fury have already - ."

"Why do you still use those names? The Cobra Unit is gone, Mikhail."

Sorrow dropped his hand at the sound of his real name. His eyes were wide and glowing. Pain laughed, deep and resonant. "I remember everyone's names," he said. "I always had a thought of living my own life again after the war."

"But you know that there is no such thing as your 'own life'." Sorrow's voice was sad with a frost of sarcasm. He sounded like breath hanging in the cold air.

"You're trying to reunite the Cobras."

Sorrow nodded. There was cautious excitement in his pale face. He was fervent with a secret, his final ammunition in the fight the reclaim Pain as a Cobra.

"It's for the Joy, Pain. She's alive."

Pain took Sorrow's hand in his, large as a baseball mitt, and drew the man into an embrace. Over Sorrow's shoulder, two freckled faces peered through the rippled glass window, noses bisected by the wooden frame. Tears sketched paths down their grimy cheeks.

* * *

"Could have sworn the God-forsaken place was right here!" Fury shouted, throwing the smoldering butt of his cigarette on the paving bricks.

"Satisfied that you were wrong now?" the End asked with his last bit of patience. He had let the younger man lead him all over London, and now his joints ached as they only can when a day of walking has led nowhere.

"The hell I was wrong! They must have torn the damn place down," Fury growled.

"I know I might be a 'senile old toad', as you put it, but none of these buildings looks new. In fact, they look to be over a hundred years old."

"If you're so goddamn smart, _you_ take us there." Fury lit another cigarette, cupping his hand to block the evening mist.

"Gladly," the End replied.

In ten minutes, they were waiting for David Oh in the entryway of the familiar SOE building. Fury held a dying cigarette between his lips and muttered that the End had just gotten lucky in finding the street.

"Oh, hell," said a high hiss of a voice in English.

Fury looked up from putting out his cigarette on the wallpaper in time to see Fear take a step back.

"You curse like a goddamn woman," Fury said. "If you're not exactly excited to see me, you say, 'Aw, shit.'"

A broad smile lit Fear's dark features. Then his face fell suddenly into a deep gloom.

"You're here to see Lieutenant Oh?" he asked flatly.

Fury narrowed his eyes but did not speak.

"Yes," the End answered. "Could we go to his office, Fear?"

"I'm afraid the lieutenant is no longer here. He has gone back to - ."

"What's this I hear about a pair of Russians looking for David?" a familiar voice chimed from the end of the hall.

Sabine clacked toward them in dark red heels and the uniform of a FANY. She walked with a limp.

"Who let them in?" she demanded.

"Pardon me, madame," the End said politely, "but we have business with Lieutenant Oh."

"He is not here," she sneered, her beautiful face distorted with disgust. "This is no place for traitors!"

"Who the hell are the traitors, bitch?" Fury roared. The End laid a hand on his shoulder, but the gesture only angered Fury further.

"I know what you've been doing," Sabine shouted. "I can call security. They'll either break you or kill you."

"Call them! I'm fucking armed!"

Under their shouting, the End whispered, "Fear, where is David?"

"He went back to the SAS," Fear answered. "Some mission that I'm… ah… not supposed to talk about."

"Fear, we have some strange news. The Joy - ."

"Is alive. I know. Sorrow wants the Cobras together, and she's coming back to London."

"Sorrow went after the Pain. You're the last - ."

The entryway had filled with onlookers, but Sabine told them to stay back even as Fury held her against a wall and spat Russian curse words.

"Fucking _stop_, Fury!" Fear hissed, grasping his friend by the shoulder and tearing him away from Sabine. With an enormous sob, Sabine hid her face against Fear's chest.

"He threatened me!" she cried, suddenly helpless.

"They are my comrades, Sabine," Fear said. Fury scoffed.

"Don't you use their despicable word!" Sabine screamed, pushing Fear away. "Go! All of you! If you are not gone in five seconds, you will be escorted out in handcuffs."

"Sabine, this is unreasonable."

"Five!"

Fear took the End's arm and reached for Fury's.

"You're just going to listen to the bitch, Fear?"

"Four!"

"We have to leave, Fury."

"Three!"

"We could fucking take them all on! Blow the place to hell."

"TWO!"

"These are our allies, Fury."

Fury reached into a pocket. Fear knew his expression. He had grenades.

"ONE!"

"The Joy needs us!" Fear shouted angrily.

"Fuck," Fury said under his breath. He relaxed his body and turned to leave with his comrades.

As they passed through the doorway, Sabine called to the gathered crowd, "If any one of them returns, shoot him immediately."

* * *

Historical Notes:

I've started translating my foreign language bits sometimes in my writing, so "Privyet, tovarishch" does mean "Hello, comrade".

A ghillie suit is a suit of fake foliage snipers and hunters wear to blend in with brush.

Again, I want to remind everyone that I know very well that the End's tranquilizer rifle is neither historically accurate nor possible. Please accept this as my science fiction touch.

Because I don't plan on explaining what the Joy's Chinese phrase meant, let me explain it here. It means "Fuck eighteen generations of your ancestors." Basically, she's saying, "Up yours" to Fury's disbelief that she's still alive.

Tokarev was a developer of Russian firearms at the time.

Self-propelled combine harvesters at that time overheated if the chaff was not knocked out of the radiators at intervals.

The FANYs, or First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, were a British all-female unit that provided driving services during World War II. Several women in FANY served SOE.

SAS, Strategic Air Service, was the special forces detachment that began as L-Detachment. In Metal Gear canon, David Oh and The Boss founded SAS.


	32. London Sunsets

Chapter 32: London Sunsets

* * *

Deep blackout darkness had settled over London long before they reached David's apartment. Dark clouds covered the stars, but the air was warmer. The End sensed a storm.

Light rain began when they were a mile away, and by the time they crowded into the tiny hallway in front of his apartment, it was a downpour. Fear's hair hung lank as a drenched dog's.

"Where the hell are we?" Fury asked.

Fear had not told any of them where they were going, only that it was "somewhere safe".

"David's flat," Fear answered, taking a key from his pocket. He shivered – there had not been time to get his coat.

"You have a goddamn key?"

Fear grinned smugly as he pushed the door open. "Make yourselves at home. Ol' Davey even has a refrigerator."

The flat was open and spacious for a single man. Every appliance was modern and spotless except for the layer of dust that covered all surfaces. Fear pushed through a stylish double-hinged black door into David's bedroom and flopped onto the neatly-made bed.

"You and Davey do that when he's home?" Fury jeered from the doorway.

"Jealous, Fury? Want to join me?" Fear smirked and bounced on the black and red striped sheets.

"You sound like a damn homo," Fury muttered as he turned away.

Fear rolled onto the floor, leaving a wet outline where he had been, and followed Fury to the kitchen. "God, I'm hungry. Want a sandwich, Fury?"

He opened the squat black refrigerator and piled packages of sliced meat and cheese on the table.

"Shit, Fear," Fury said, sniffing a block of white cheese flecked with green. "How long has Davey been gone? It's all bloody rotten."

"Some Brits pay a hell of a lot for mold like that."

Fear stacked foul-smelling corned beef and cheese on a dry crisp of bread. Then he spooned mustard on top and took a bite. "Pretty good," he said, raining crumbs on the checkered kitchen floor.

"He's got the Pain!" the End announced. He was hunched over a case large enough to hold a clarinet that lay open on David's sofa.

"Where the hell did you get a radio?" Fury asked.

"Had it in my pack when we left the country house," the old man replied with a hint of amusement.

"More than anything," Fear said between bites, "when did you learn to use it?"

He plopped onto the couch and immediately picked up the little brown case.

"You should remember that I've been a soldier since before any of you were born," the End said, snatching the case from Fear's hand. "I practically invented this thing."

"So Sorrow actually got the overgrown bastard to come back," Fury mused, lighting a cigarette.

"You can't smoke in here!" Fear cried. "David won't like it."

Fury took a long draw and then tapped the ashes onto the carpet. "Like you said, I'm making myself at home."

* * *

On Saturday, Sorrow and Pain arrived on a rusted green motorbike. The sunset was long and late, and Pain watched it from David's window.

Sorrow had heard a familiar voice on Thursday. It told him in sonorous tones that Bitty had visited the house in Kitty Hawk. James lamented every detail of his daughter's brief visit – her swollen abdomen and bitter expression, the tired cotton dress so unlike the Joy they both knew. Sorrow imagined that he could see her too; he was the wind wrapping her dress slowly around her knees.

He expected James to admonish him, to be angry in the jealous way of fathers, but when James spoke of his unborn grandchild, it was with martyr-like resignation. Sorrow only realized later, when it was his turn to pilot the motorbike down the poorly-maintained country roads, that James would know his grandchild sooner if it were stillborn. For several days, Sorrow smiled whenever he thought no one was watching.

"Too much smiling for a Russian," Fury and the End agreed.

* * *

Late Wednesday night, David Oh found his own door bolted from the inside. The door opened a few inches into darkness, and a pale, pointed face appeared in the crack.

"Password?" the face hissed.

David took a startled step back before he recognized the Fear.

"I would ask why you're at my flat in the first place," David said, "but I am certain I won't like the answer. Kindly let me in."

"I asked for the password."

"There's no bloody password to get into _my_ flat!"

Fear slammed the door, almost clipping David's nose.

"This goddamn game is getting old," another voice said from inside the flat. Then some low muttering and a deep voice saying, "I don't know. I thought it was funny."

"Perhaps at first, Pain…" An old man. "But this is still a war zone. Joy wouldn't want us to anger our only ally."

Ally. David felt a puff of pride inflate his chest. Then he sighed. This was the Cobra Unit talking. They were more like a deadly petting zoo than a special forces unit.

The door opened again, and the End stood with the rest of the unit behind him. David was surprised to find his apartment somewhat tidy though rather more lived-in than usual. His freezer was filled with a pile of what looked like frozen rabbits, and the three empty vodka bottles in the dustbin reminded him that he should have hidden his liquor better.

Sorrow watched the young lieutenant cross the flat. The wound that crossed his left cheek had healed into a noble scar that stretched from forehead to chin. He greeted Fear with a friendly hand on his shoulder and grinned affably at the other Cobras as if their presence in his home were not only unsurprising but welcome. His glance at Sorrow was short and furtive.

"Yes, I heard about the scene at HQ," David said an hour later after Fear had fixed him a brandy and told of Sabine's outburst. To the Fury, David said, "And I suspect it was somewhat similar with Major Astrus."

"You can drop his damn rank. I doubt he'll be staying in bloody England after the war," Fury murmured. "And yeah, it was the same shit with him but more violent. The American assholes don't want us, and the goddamn Russians about killed us. What the hell are we supposed to do? We'll be lucky to get out of the country with our asses intact."

David chuckled, and Sorrow was reminded uncomfortably of Astrus.

"As a matter of fact," David laughed, "the American Philosophers are _quite _interested in you. My sister can be quite the bad representative."

Fury made a low noise deep in his throat and looked at Fear who was smirking.

"I am certain the Joy told you about her days with L-Detachment," David continued.

Only the Pain nodded knowingly, and Sorrow was struck again by how little he knew of her past.

"L-Detachment is now a force called SAS, and I am no longer a lieutenant but a captain." David looked around the room pompously. "My position as one of the founders of L-Detachment makes me privy to certain information."

Fury feigned an exaggerated yawn, and the End was asleep against Pain's shoulder.

"So, rightfully, I have information about a certain invasion."

Sorrow and Fear both saw Fury bristle at the word.

"I mean, of course, a full Allied invasion of France."

The End awoke with a snort, and Fury relaxed.

"And, incidentally," David said, his face glowing with excitement to the roots of his sandy hair, "someone pushed for your involvement in this invasion. You won't believe it, but the Joy - ."

"Is alive," they said in unison, and David blinked.

"If you knew, then why didn't you tell me, Fear?"

"Sabine's request, sir." Fear said it resolutely. Following Sabine's order was his duty.

"How this stayed hidden from me for so long…," David muttered. "Well, never matter. We all know now, and the truth is that she's on her way back to England, though rather unfit for a mission." He turned toward Sorrow but quickly dodged the medium's ghastly pale stare.

"And, well," he continued in a stammer. "We'll save the details for the briefing. I guess you'll be staying here, though I will be taking the bed."

Pain crossed his arms pointedly.

"Hmmm… well, I really am more of a couch man."

Fear leaned into David's face and brushed the man's nose with his tongue. "You can't be too sure the sort of things that happened on this couch… while you were gone."

David stood. "Yes. Well, I will take the floor." He squinted at the carpet and then stooped. "Are these… cigarette burns?"

"Why the fuck would you think that?" Fury snarled.

David laughed nervously. "Right."

* * *

"It's a quick mission and the sort I hear you're best at," David said the next morning while nibbling his toast.

"Yes?" Fear hissed, his bare arms resting on the table. David hoped he had showered recently.

"It's not something you can refuse anyway, since it came from the Philosophers."

"Just tell us about the damn mission. God, you Brits talk too much," Fury growled, slamming his hand on the table so violently that the teacups rattled.

"Alright. Alright. Didn't Joy ever teach you monkeys any manners?" Silence and five smoldering glares answered. "Right. It's another assassination and here in London, so it's imperative that it looks like an accident."

Sorrow choked on his tea at the word "assassination".

"What sort of target?" the End asked.

"A commodore of the RAF. Rather charismatic gentleman, but his goals are not in step with the Philosophers. He was given a chance to keep quiet, but he refused."

"Who is leading the mission?" Fury asked.

"What do you mean? We don't assign leaders for Cobra Unit missions!"

"Then, hell, I'll take charge."

"Not a chance!" Fear snorted.

"By virtue of my age…," the End muttered.

"Haven't I been in this unit from the beginning?" Pain asked.

"Quiet!" David shouted. "I will assign…" He paused as if the rest of his sentence were excruciating. "… The Sorrow to lead this mission."

Fear and Fury grumbled for a moment longer, but Pain turned immediately to Sorrow and said, "What are your orders, commander?"

"I – I can't - ," Sorrow stuttered.

"You will. If you ever want to see the Joy again, you will succeed in this mission."

* * *

Fury whistled a Russian folk tune he used to hear in Moscow bars and wiped his grease-stained hands down the front of a tan RAF maintenance uniform. It was Fear's idea to drop a wooden storage crate on the commodore, and though Pain called it a dishonorable death, Sorrow nodded his agreement with the plan. The sun was low on a row of gleaming Hawker Hurricanes that had just landed. If the ground war was being fought by the Russians, the air war was fought by the Brits.

He heard Fear's shout behind him, the signal to find Air Commodore Gabriel Dalton. Sorrow had located the man alone near the planes, and Fury raced there now, hoping the commodore was still alone.

Commodore Dalton was tall, dark-haired, and dignified. He watched the darkening sky with a sad smile.

"Commodore!" Fury shouted, running toward the man who was still blessedly alone. "A…" Fury fought back a curse word. "A bandit is in the west warehouse. He attacked one of the men on my maintenance team."

Dalton squinted at him. "You new here?"

_The fucker._ "Yes. Yes, I am new."

"Where are you from?"

_Damn._ He could hear the Russian accent.

"I'm an immigrant, refugee from Poland."

"Your English is fantastic…"

"Sir, this is quite important."

"Right." Dalton and Fury dashed across RAF Northolt toward the west warehouse.

Fear, in one of Pain's black balaclavas, struggled with the End in one of the narrow aisles.

Fury and Dalton sneaked toward them from around the corner. The End signaled to Fear who shoved him away dramatically and brandished his crossbow.  
"I'm not afraid to kill an old man," he laughed.

Dalton drew his pistol and stepped into the aisle. Almost in position.

"Drop it," Dalton shouted. Fear snickered, and Fury hoped Dalton wouldn't notice.

"Don't!" Fury cried. "You'll hit the old man!" He had to get Dalton a few steps closer.

Fear lowered his weapon. "Come a little closer… Commodore. You look like a much more interesting fight than Grandpa here."

The commodore took a few steps forward, gun still trained on Fear. Just a little farther. Fury nodded to Fear over Dalton's shoulder. Fear licked his lips. Then Fury shoved the commodore under the crate as the End slammed a hand across the man's wrist. He dropped the gun. Pain threw his weight against the crate, and it crashed to the floor. Splinters flew around the Cobras, one lashing Fury across the throat and another impaling Fear's arm. Sorrow appeared from the dust cloud.

"He's still alive," he said darkly.

Dalton groaned, his body crushed up to his stomach by a shattered crate of engine parts. His face glistened with blood and sweat, and his eyes were open.

"B-bloody hell," he managed.

"Shit," Fury breathed. "Can't we do something?"

The End reached for his rifle, but Sorrow stopped his hand.

"We can't," he said. "A tranquilizer dart; that's the End. A crossbow bolt; that's the Fear. A bullet; that's an assassination. No, Pain. Not even you."

"I could cut his throat," Fear whispered.

"Too clean. Someone will notice," Sorrow replied. His eyes took in the light of the sunset outside. They glowed like flames.

The commodore gasped for water, but none of them had a canteen. His breaths rattled with the blood that filled his lungs. He was still conscious.

"Shit," Fury said again, and he paced to the door to watch the sun sink. The End followed. Pain grunted and turned away. Even Fear sighed and leaned against a wall to nurse his wounded arm. Sorrow knelt beside the dying man.

The commodore tried to speak, but he coughed blood instead. Sorrow took his hand.

"You do not need to speak," Sorrow said with maddening calm. "Soon you can tell me whatever you want."

Dalton shook his head and shuddered. He was almost gone.

"When you… go over," Sorrow whispered, "you will have your voice again. You can…"

Sorrow felt the man's spirit pass through his own body, and he fought it. _I cannot give you my body. You would hurt my comrades._

"How will they say I died?" Dalton asked.

_By accident._

"You're not a soldier, are you? You don't understand. I should have died in battle, shot down after taking a hundred Germans with me."

Far away, the Fear was saying, "I think he's dead."

Fury grunted, "Is this any different than what we did for Astrus?"

* * *

Historical Notes:

David obviously has a little bit of money if he has a new refrigerator in 1944.

Hawker Hurricanes were single-seat planes used by the RAF (Royal Air Force) during World War II. In real life, they would have been kept hidden, but this is fantasy, so I wanted that nice image of them in a row in the sunset.

RAF Northolt was one of the RAF stations near London.


	33. Stained Glass

Chapter 33: Stained Glass

* * *

Fear heard the click of his key in the lock and opened the door slowly on David's apartment. He winced and touched his right arm where it was bandaged by the End.

David was already home, sitting on the couch next to a woman whose back was turned. He stared stonily at the door.

"I should have taken the key," he barked. "But at least I'll take it back now. You won't be coming back here, Fear."

The woman looked, and Fear thought that he recognized her. When she stood, he knew that he did. She wore a loose brown dress and her blond hair in a lazy bow. Her cheeks were balefully hollow and unlit by her usual smile.

"Boss," he choked. Was it her? It could have been an older sister.

"What's the goddamn holdup?" Fury shouted from behind Pain's massive form.

"Fear," the Joy said carefully as if she were learning a new word. "Kindly let the rest of my unit in."

He nodded timidly and stepped aside. Pain ducked through the doorway and saluted silently. The End followed, bowing rather regally. Then Fury pushed through the doorway.

"Holy…," he said as Sorrow wriggled past him and approached the sofa.

As the Cobras entered, Joy made no movement, not even a change in expression. She held her mouth straight and impassive – not a smile, not a frown – until Sorrow moved toward her. Only the Fear saw the change, longing brightening her face so slightly, but Sorrow did not embrace her. He pulled the bandanna from his pocket, its ends more worn than when he had taken it, and tied it around her head.

She was still, almost at attention, until he was finished. Then she smiled like she had in the hospital and said, "Thank you, Sorrow."

"The Joy has had a long week. I think she - ," David started, but Joy stopped him with a stern look.

"Thank you for your concern, David, but I can decide for myself what is best for me. Cobras…" She paused and gazed at each of them as if she were waking from a dream. "Sons… I am certain we have much to discuss. You have questions, and I have questions, but I am afraid we will have to wait a long while for answers. Tomorrow we will leave for the south of England to prepare for our next mission. This is no assassination or small act of sabotage but a mission beyond the scope of any we have taken before.

"We have been made soft by comfortable beds and warm meals. Conflicting ideologies have made us question our missions. All of us have lost sight of what it means to be a soldier. Enjoy your last night with the illusion of safety. Tomorrow, you are mine again."

Her words filled the room after she had finished speaking. David felt like a child on the night he had walked in on his parents making love. Sorrow touched her face, then her abdomen, and finally she took his hand and brought it to her lips. Hot emotion flushed David's cheeks as it had that night – the forbidden jealousy of a young boy for his mother. The other Cobras, reassured by the Joy's response, gathered to embrace her. She had called them "sons", but they looked at her like lovers.

* * *

There were sixteen blue pieces in the abstract stained glass that decorated the front door. David counted them while he waited for someone to answer the doorbell. It was Easter Sunday, 1939, and he carried a potted lily, white trumpets on long, leafy stems.

The door opened, and the dusky, sweet scent of James's cigars drifted into the April air. James's daughter stood in the entryway, a blue-eyed tomboy in a white shirt and loose pants the color of sea foam. Her father was behind her, posed against a wall in his Sunday best, a cigar in one hand.

"Ellie!" David cried. Then he composed himself. "I brought some flowers from church, and I wondered if you might join me in planting them."

She lifted her eyebrows. "Where?"

"At – at your mother's grave, perhaps."

The girl often frowned when her mother was mentioned, but she grinned now. "She's buried in New York, Mr. Oh. I'm certain you don't mean to drive that far. You drove far enough to get down here today."

Still fair-skinned and freckled at twenty-nine, David blushed. "I didn't know!"

"But does it have to be _her_ grave?" Ellie asked with a mischievous twinkle so like her father.

An hour later, they were digging a small hole on the forgotten grave of "Amelia Palance 1890-1929". Tall grass had crowded the lonely stone, set apart from the other graves in the churchyard by a sycamore. Ellie and David cleared the weeds and set the rooted bulb into the ground.

"There," David said proudly, stepping back to see the Easter lilies growing in front of the stone like an image in a stained glass arch. "I'll bet she was lonely out here."

"She's dead. She doesn't even know we're here." Ellie's voice was dry and unsentimental.

"Then why leave flowers?"

"Because you wanted to." She smiled at him, for him, and David knew that he wanted that smile to greet him every morning. Ellie was barely seventeen, but in a year he could take her to England and…

"Do you think they'll invade Poland?" Ellie asked. Her eyes watched the flowers nod, but she was far above the world, staring with eyes much older than seventeen.

"Who?"

"Germany." She said it with a strange grin.

"I hope not."

"Why? Isn't that the way the world changes? Through war?" No innocence in her words. History was a pile of corpses. How pragmatic.

She was a girl raised by men, her father's friends in the Air Corps and those more mysterious men David was beginning to understand as the Philosophers.

A strand of golden hair blew across her lips. She brushed it away, but the wind returned it, held it there while her eyes laughed.

"I went up to Langley last month," she said. "I didn't tell my father."

"Langley?" That was where he was stationed for his officer exchange.

"They wouldn't have me," she said sadly. "Wouldn't even let me test."

"What are you…" Then he understood. The Army. She had tried to join the Army. "I'm certain your father could have - ."

"No," she said in a tone that offered no compromise. "I will not have him involved."

Her chin was hard, her lips straight. David wanted to betray her father's trust and soften them with a kiss.

* * *

"You can't bet a damn cigarette, Fury. You know the rules," Joy said, tossing his cigarette back.

"Fuck the rules," Fury grumbled. He tucked the cigarette between his lips and lit a match.

"I would prefer you didn't smoke in my flat," David said with pursed lips.

Fury lit the cigarette and shook the match.

Joy glared at him firmly. "He said that he would prefer you didn't smoke in here."

"Shit. Fine." He threw the cigarette over his shoulder. Pain caught it in his glove and pinched it out.

In five minutes, Fear had a full house of threes and nines. Not much, but at least he could see that the others were doing no better. Fury had nothing. If he had, there would be no hiding his smugness from the Fear. David looked as worried and cautious as ever. Poker was not his game. Beyond the basic rules, he didn't even know how to play. Pain only ever showed his eyes, so Fear was an expert at reading them. Nothing there. The End never took the game seriously. He grinned if he won, grinned if he lost. Sorrow had never played poker with the Cobras, and Fear had wondered if the creep might cheat. After the cards were dealt, he had started to raise the bet, but then he blushed crimson and said quietly, "I will fold."

The Joy was always difficult, inscrutable, sometimes contradictory. Now she wore the expression from an hour ago when she had turned at the sound of Fear's name.

Fear won the first hand. Fury threw his cards across the table and declared Beginner's Luck when David won the second hand. After a little more alcohol, half of the players had lost everything to the Joy, and she was smiling again, though not as easily as she had before going to America.

"It's late," she declared when David's clock chimed three in the morning.

* * *

The End snored loudly with his head thrown back against the chair, and Sorrow snoozed open-mouthed against Joy's shoulder. She woke him with a kiss on his forehead. Their relationship was obvious to the other Cobras by now, so she saw no harm in the gesture.

"You take my bed, Joy," David said.

"I don't need you treating me like some fragile lady."

"It's not because you're a woman but because you're pregnant."

She would have argued further, but her exhaustion sweetened the idea of a comfortable bed.

"Thank you," she said.

David cleared the glasses from the table. On his way to the sink, he heard Joy's low voice mumble, "Come on, Sorrow. Time to sleep."

Glass shattered across the tiled floor.

* * *

Sorrow awoke sluggishly and early the next morning. He stared with drowsy eyes at Joy's face turned toward the brightening ceiling before he realized that her eyes were open. Her chest and rounded stomach rose beneath David's striped duvet. Sorrow slipped his hand across the satin sheet and found her exposed flank where her shirt had crept up during the night. She had not slept soundly.

"Hm?" she murmured, turning her body to face Sorrow. "Morning."

"Good morning, Joy," Sorrow said, pulling his hand away. She took it back and laid it flat against her stomach.

"I like when you do that, Sorrow. We may not… Do you feel anything?"

"You mean… inside you?"

"Yes. I feel him move all the time, and I wondered if anyone else could."

_Him._ She seemed certain it was a boy. "Is he moving now, Joy?"

"Not yet, but he will."

They were still for a while, Joy's face brightening as more light gleamed through the windows, and Sorrow's hand pressing against her bare abdomen.

Then she winced, not in pain but in mild surprise. "There. Did you feel it?"

He didn't.

"Again! You feel?"

This time, Sorrow felt something push back against his hand, his child alive in her but, until this moment, deader to him than those who had already lived full lives. He tried to remember his time inside his mother's womb – his before-life. It was easier to imagine the afterlife. Were there mediums who could speak to the unborn infants who had not yet learned words?

When the child had stopped moving again, Sorrow's hands found Joy's breasts, rounder than before, ready for the child. He slid his hands down her sides to measure her new and temporary curves. Joy was tranquil and silent and full of thoughts as she let Sorrow explore the body she shared transiently with another life. Sorrow wondered whether she could speak to its soul like he could speak to the dead when they shared his body.

* * *

David was distant and absent-minded at lunch. Pain caught him with a spoonful of salt ready to dump into his tea. Fear had seen him open the salt shaker but had said nothing.

"We'll be heading south to Brighton in an hour," David said with unfocused eyes.

"You're coming with us?" Joy asked.

"Yes, of course. SAS is overseeing the mission." His eyes were wide, and though he wasn't lying, his tone was suspiciously evasive.

"What do you mean by 'overseeing'?" Joy prodded.

"I just mean the briefing. You'll have no interference from us, but it _is_ part of a larger effort of all Allied forces. Naturally, your part of the mission is through SAS." He was lying now, and Fear could see that Joy knew it. She nodded in false agreement.

* * *

"Your drop zone will be here," said Lieutenant Colonel Paddy Mayne as he pointed to an open space just north of Mathieu, France. "An SOE agent codenamed Parasite will meet you on the ground."

He was looking around the table at each of them with his shallow, drooping eyes as he spoke. Finally, he looked at Joy, and his eyes dropped immediately to her belly.

"You really don't mean to parachute, Joy?" he asked.

"You know me, Mayne."

Mayne glanced at David who shrugged indulgently.

"Continue, please," Joy snapped, leaning over the map.

"The rocket launch sites are here at Mathieu. Here." He pointed to Ryes. "Here." Nonant. "Here." Surrain. "Here." Near Pointe-du-Hoc. "And especially here at the chateau in Molay-Littry. This seems to be their main launch site in Normandy. The rest are simply platforms. From any of these locations, six in all, they can easily hit London, and they could devastate our forces building along the coast before we even get a chance to leave."

Churchill had said something similar… so many months ago on the Queen Mary. It could have been another life or a dream, another person's experience related to her through a book. No, now it was real, so real that the tide of the war could be turned by her response. She would realize this much later when her country was preparing to use a similar rocket to send her into space, but on the twenty-ninth of May in 1944, she stood in the austere briefing room SAS had borrowed and thought only of the mission.

"You will have some explosives with you when you jump." Fear cringed, and Fury grinned. "But the majority of your supplies are being dropped tomorrow for the Resistance to pick up. Each rocket installation requires a small group of men, and each will likely have two rockets. You will need to take out everyone, destroy the rockets and destroy the platform. This is not a mission for mercy."

Joy turned to the Sorrow, but he showed no trepidation.

"Anyone who sees you, kill him. French, German, I don't care. You will be going without the benefit of a cover or civilian clothing. You're commandos, and as I'm sure you well know, you will not be treated as prisoners of war if captured."

"We'll be fucking executed," Fury finished grimly.

David, who was pacing a circle around all of them since the beginning, stopped and glanced at Joy. She was turned away, eyes on Mayne, hand very close to Sorrow's but not touching.

"We understand, sir," she said. "This is not our first mission."

Mayne dismissed the Cobras but asked Joy to stay. He gave her a small bag of red pills.

"L tablets," she said gravely.

"Yes. I'm surprised you knew."

"Bite into one, and you'll be dead in fifteen seconds."

"Just long enough to say your prayers," Mayne said wryly. "Joy, I don't know what sort of unit you've gotten into, but it must be something special. The secrecy of this mission, the suicide pills... Please give them to your unit when you see fit. For SOE agents, the tablets are an option for escaping torture. I was to inform you that you and your unit are not to allow yourselves to be captured. If you cannot fight, you take the tablet."

_And leave not even a body behind,_ Joy thought. If her father had known about the microbombs, she was certain he would not have funded the Cobra Unit. The bombs were a Soviet idea meant to do a little extra damage in case a Cobra was killed. Now they were using them to erase all evidence of the Cobras' existence. Perhaps that had been the plan from the beginning.

"Thank you, sir," Joy said with a nod.

David was still silently staring at the opposite wall when she left.

* * *

Sorrow rolled over again in his cot so that he was turned toward the End. The old man's face was out of focus, but Sorrow could hear his deep, rumbling snores. The room was muggy, full of sleeping bodies. A fly circled overhead and landed somewhere, probably on the End.

Then there was a scream, silent to the sleeping Cobras but piercing to the Sorrow. He felt for his glasses in the bag at the end of the bed.

"We have an intruder," the voice shouted, breathlessly doing his duty as night watchman even in death. "I didn't see him but I think… I think he…"

_Do you see him? Is he still there?_ Sorrow asked, slipping his feet into his bots without tying the laces.

"No. I can't find him. Am I…?"

_Yes. You're dead, but I can hear you. What do you know?_

Sorrow tore down the hallway. He passed Joy's room but decided not to wake her. There were other watchmen, and Sorrow wanted to do this without her help. Outside, the base was warm and quiet. A bat dropped low over Sorrow's head and then flapped into the night. Sorrow drew his Colt and carried it at his side, ready to kill again.

The dead soldier led Sorrow to his body lying half-hidden in a bush. His throat was cut, and blood stained the grass.

"Will you raise the alarm?" the soldier asked.

_In a moment._ No one else had died. Was the intruder there only to target this one man?

"Behind you!" the soldier shouted, but Sorrow was not as quick as his comrades. As he turned, he felt his glasses lifted from his nose, and he pointed his gun unsteadily at a face that was a blur. Unfocused hands reached into the air.

"Hello, Sorrow," the blur said in Mark Astrus's voice. "I thought we might have a chat."

* * *

Historical Notes:

Langley refers to Langley Air Force Base, one of the oldest bases in the U.S. At the time of the story, it was already an air base for the Army Air Corps.

Colonel Paddy Mayne was a real person, one of the founding members of SAS. He was infamous for his temper.

L tablets were lethal tablets carried by SOE agents in case they wanted to kill themselves to escape torture. They were not carried by the SAS.


	34. Hornets and Rockets

Chapter 34: Hornets and Rockets

* * *

"Hornets, Pain?" Joy asked the next morning as they planted dummy explosives on buildings around the base. "The bees were effective weapons, yes, but I don't see how a swarm of hornets will help us place explosives."

"Not by themselves," Pain sighed. "I need another person. Fury?"

"Hell, no… to whatever it is!" he shouted.

"But you're the explosives expert."

"Fear should do it," Joy said bluntly.

"Me, boss?" he hissed.

"You'd normally be the one placing the explosives up high, so it may as well be you. What does he have to do, Pain?"

"Well, I have the hornets surround him, like this."

"WHAT THE HELL, PAIN?" Fear screamed as the cloud of hornets engulfed him.

"Stand still, Fear!"

"How in the hell can I stand still when I'm - !"

Fear felt the ground drop under his feet, and he was floating upward. Small points of pressure enclosed his body as if he were wrapped in a form-fitting net.

"Impressive, Pain," Joy laughed. "You have outdone all of us in strangeness."

Pain stared at her blankly.

"It's a compliment," she added. "So why don't they…?"

"Sting him? The hornets are different from my bullet bees."

"Oh, lord, he's naming them now," Fury sighed. He leered up at Fear and gave him a dainty wave.

"Go to hell," Fear yelled, and he spat in Fury's face.

"You little fucker!"

Fear stuck his tongue childishly between his teeth and hissed.

"And unlike the bullet bees," Pain was saying, "the hornets won't just dig into the body and kill him. They only attack when provoked. Fury, what in God's name?"

Fury had taken a step back and hefted the gun on the flame thrower he carried. A stream of fire shot past the swarm of hornets, dropping some of them to the ground like falling embers.

"You fucking BASTARD!" Fear howled as he fell with them, landing safely only because he hit the ground like a rag doll and rolled across the grass to shake away the hornets.

Sorrow watched all of this with his eyes on Joy. The End saw him staring at her, sad expression unchanged through the entire exercise. He must be worried, and good heavens, the boy had reason to be. His lover and child shared the same body, so he would lose both if he lost one. In the End's old age, worry was like breath. It had kept him alive all these years, through war and revolution and famines. As his family had grown, he had added to an ever-longer list in his silent prayers each night. He would add Joy and Sorrow's child to the end tonight, right after the Cobra Unit.

* * *

Joy spread her fingers covered in wet baking soda over Fear's bare shoulders. The cool paste soothed the vicious red welts left by Pain's hornets.

"I really should have made you do this yourself," she muttered.

"But I'll get better so much faster if you do it." He smirked across the hall to where Pain was still berating Fury.

"They're living creatures!" Pain bellowed.

"You'll be better by tomorrow, Fear," Joy said humorlessly. "Remember your end of this deal."

"I never want to touch the bloody vermin again," he said, but when he saw Joy's glare, he purred, "But I'll do it. For you, Boss."

"You just have to be _nice_ to them," Pain was saying.

"I don't have to be nice to a bunch of goddamned bees!" Fury shouted.

"Hornets."

"Same damn thing!"

"You don't have to worry about her," the End whispered to the Sorrow. The boy was staring at Joy again. He had always been quiet, but today most of Sorrow's speech had been single-word acknowledgements of Joy's orders.

"Do you know why she started the Cobra Unit?" Sorrow asked it as a rhetorical question, but the End answered.

"I'm fuzzy on the details, but from what I've heard, she met the Pain while training for OSS and requested money from the Philosophers to seek out others like him. Special Operations Team Zero, but she had already begun to call us Cobras. It would be a special forces unit where the soldiers themselves were special."

"Pain doesn't feel any pain. You are in tune with the forest, taking energy from the sun. Fear…"

"A man of many talents," the End said with a smile.

"And Fury… an explosives expert? Hardly a mutation."

"And I'm not sure it was our powers she wanted in her unit," the End mused.

* * *

"Do you know why Joy created the Cobra Unit?"

Sorrow saw a glint as Astrus turned his glasses over in his hands.

"No," Sorrow answered. The muggy night closed around him and Astrus like an iron maiden.

"She was turned down by the Army," Astrus said, "and her father let her build a little unit of kooks so that she could feel better about herself."

The air was tight around Sorrow, a filmy shell his vision could not penetrate.

"You should have been ours, Sorrow," Astrus continued. "But she took you because you fit in with her menagerie. Your weaknesses could boost her ego, and your powers…"

"Don't…," Sorrow spoke toward the pale blur that was Astrus. It was like praying to an unfamiliar god.

"Your thoughts are confounded by your love for her, but listen for a moment. I want you to think clearly."

Clearly. Clearly. Sorrow closed his eyes and imagined Astrus in front of him. It was easier than trying to see.

"When you were found in Poland…," Astrus said. In Sorrow's mind, his face was stern. "She was there to rescue a man named Igor Koppel, a Soviet citizen of German descent who was detained by the Nazis as a chemist. Her mission, as the Philosophers gave it, was to take Dr. Koppel and his research back to the Soviet Union. Whatever happened to start it, I cannot know, but the mission turned into a massacre. You and Koppel were the only survivors, and a day after returning to the Soviet Union, Koppel was murdered in his bed."

Skorzeny. Sorrow saw Otto Skorzeny saying this with Astrus's voice.

"Has she ever talked about this, Sorrow? Do you know who killed Dr. Koppel?"

Sorrow's memory of that time was filled with gaps and the vaguest memories of each of the Cobras. They spoke German to him, English to one another. His eyes adjusted to daylight, and he needed glasses. The Cobras were shadows and living voices, not in his mind and not scientists. Joy spoke to him like a mother, and he followed her until she was in dark camouflage, whispering like a reed-less oboe. She said, "I have to go, Sorrow, but I'll come back," and she sheathed a knife with a blade sharp as death itself. Her lips held a smile.

"She wouldn't…," Sorrow said to Astrus, but he knew that she had.

* * *

David flipped absently through the stack of papers on the table while he spoke. "I heard how your exercise this morning went."

"Did you?" Joy asked. She was focused on a map of Normandy.

"I really think you would be much better suited to SAS."

"Mm-hm."

"You agree with me?"

"Mm-hm." Joy made a mark in red ink.

"I'm surprised and honestly a bit disappointed that you've stuck with the Cobras. To be frank, the Philosophers would love to stop funding them. They're more suited to a prison than the battlefield."

"Your opinions are more suited to a schoolyard than a briefing room." Joy looked up demurely.

David's cheeks flushed hot in her gaze, but age had minimized the visible blush.

"So I see that Paddy didn't have all of the information," Joy said, slipping back into the role of military leader. "From these pictures, it looks like the chateau Le Molay-Littry…" The French words poured off of her tongue like water from a fountain. "… Is where they plan to stockpile the rockets. They may be taking them from the chateau to these other positions. If we could know for certain… if we could land near the chateau, we could destroy all of the weapons before they reach the installations."

"We cannot change the mission now. You're leaving tomorrow."

"The chateau is currently our final target. If we move down the coast destroying these smaller installations, the Nazis will notice the loss of radio contact and realize that the V2 rockets are being targeted. They'll fortify the bunker in Molay-Littry."

"The Resistance members will take over radio contact," David said. He looked worried, and Joy wondered if she was the reason. It was a flimsy plan, but she believed David would never send her into certain death.

"Parasite," Joy said. "We were supposed to talk about him. How will I know him?"

"He's an OSS commando. I've never met the man. He was chosen for Operation Eunuch because - ."

Joy glared at him in exaggerated disgust. "Eunuch? When were you going to tell me the name of the operation?"

"Perhaps never," David chuckled.

"It's… clever."

David scratched behind his ear. "You know the SAS…"

_I know you,_ she thought. "So Parasite will have some identifying mark?"

"You'll meet the Resistance first. Instruct your unit to speak to no one until you say they can. A woman with a red flower in her lapel will ask you where the snakes went when they were driven from Ireland. You will tell her that they came to France."

"You have fun writing these, don't you?" Joy sighed.

"That one wasn't mine. The woman will take you to Parasite."

"And they will give us the explosives."

"Yes."

"David," Joy said. David was startled – it had been many years since she had called him by his first name. "What are you hiding?"

"Not – not a thing, Joy."

"You stutter when you don't want to tell me something."

David grasped both of Joy's hands and lowered them to the table, across the maps and photographs. "I – I don't want you to go."

He had expected Joy to laugh and tell him not to worry, but instead she nodded. "Of course you don't."

"You'll stay, then?" David let out the breath he didn't know he had been holding.

"No." It was that final "no" again. "This is my mission, David."

"But your child - ."

"Is not as important as the mission. I have made enough selfish decisions. Now I have to make up for it." She grinned. "And this may be the grandest invasion of all time. I wouldn't miss it for the world."

* * *

Another warm night fell over the base, and Joy padded silently down the paved walkways. A watchman had disappeared the night before, so the guard was doubled tonight. Joy found a quiet place in the open where she could see the moon half-covered by clouds. Sorrow had not come to her room last night. She had slept alone, allowed a real bed because of what the soldiers called her "condition". In France, she would sleep on the rocky ground, but these men did not know that, did not know her.

She stood in the moonlight waiting for Sorrow like a wife waits for an apology after a fight. She had not told Sorrow to meet her, but she asked him in her mind and wished he could hear.

After an hour, Joy crept to his bedside. His eyes were closed, but he was awake.

Fear heard her at the door, felt the vibration as she crossed the room.

"Sorrow," she whispered like sweetened milk. Fear saw her face in his mind flushed with desire. "Sorrow, come with me."

A scuffling sound as Sorrow found his glasses. Then he left with her in silence.

Fear groaned deeply and thought of Sabine.

* * *

Joy and Sorrow lay naked on top of the roughly woven sheets.

"You can speak, Sorrow," Joy said. "No one can hear us."

His gaze was steady and woeful. He said nothing.

"I know this mission worries you," she said. "It… it worries me."

She sounded like a woman, bothering others with her problems. Surely Sorrow did not want to hear her blather on their last night in peace. She kissed him, but his lips were icy and unmoved.

"Sorrow?" She laid his cold hand on her breast and shivered. Sorrow traced his fingers to the center of her chest where they found the small disc beneath her skin. The microbomb. Had she ever told Sorrow about them?

"It's a bomb," she said, and his hand recoiled slightly. "Very powerful but very small, a Chinese invention. The other Cobras have them too. If…" She wanted to say "my", but it seemed too personal. "… One of our hearts stopped for just five seconds, it would explode, destroying… the body and perhaps killing someone nearby. I guess we're like the kamikaze… in that way."

Sorrow spoke finally, his voice gravely and soft. "But I do not have one."

"No, you don't."

"Why?" He said it like a dare.

Another chance to talk about her own worries. Sorrow did that. He drew her thoughts out like a snake from a basket

"I didn't want to give them a chance to take you," she said.

"Who?" Sorrow's irises were pale blue with dark rings around the edge.

"The Soviet scientists."

"I see," Sorrow said, and then his eyes looked past her. She would have preferred if he had turned away.

"Sorrow?" she asked again after a moment. "Misha?" Could he even see her anymore?

"Yes," he said. "I hear. I think I may be disappointing you tonight."

His body was still cold as she swept the blanket over them. "No," she lied. "I can enjoy the quiet."

Joy pulled him to her warm body and breathed vital and sweet across his clammy skin.

* * *

Historical Notes:

There was a V2 rocket launch site being built at a chateau in Le Molay-Littry, but the project was scrapped before any rockets were launched.

SOE operatives on their first mission would meet a contact behind enemy lines called a "cut-out". Usually, the cut-out was not known personally to the local Resistance, but he or she would have a way to contact them. My woman with the red flower is not a cut-out, but she has a similar method of identification – a piece of clothing that she always wears when meeting agents and a set password.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but the microbombs are fictional inventions in the Metal Gear universe. The actual way in which they function in the game is slightly different, but I'm going to bend that because they're perhaps a bit TOO ridiculous for me in the game (it destroys the body and effects of the person wearing one).


	35. Sons of the Joy

Chapter 35: Sons of the Joy

* * *

Joy's hand brushed the smooth suicide tablets as she pulled on her trousers in the morning. She let Sorrow sleep a little longer in her bed – to finish his dream. She hoped it was a good dream. Sleep would be a luxury on this mission.

Sorrow rolled over, and his arm fell across the bed, still warm where Joy had been sleeping. His eyes were open, and he was sitting up immediately. When he saw Joy, the scant color returned to his cheeks.

"I haven't left again," she laughed, buttoning her top over the bulge of her stomach. "Do you think we ought to name him, Misha?"

The words had slipped out like sand between her fingers. They were sentimental, fanciful words. Worse, they implied permanence.

"No," Sorrow said. He sighed and set his glasses on his long nose.

His flippant response startled Joy, but she took it as an invitation to continue. "Would you choose something Russian or American?"

"No name."

But Joy laughed blithely. The fantasy of naming her child lightened the weight of the L tablets in her pockets. "Perhaps Adam, like he's the first man on Earth."

"Too common," Sorrow muttered. "It must sound good with Mikhailovich. 'Adam' is dull."

"Who says we'll give him a Russian-style name?"

"Who says is boy at all?" Sorrow covered his mouth at his bad English.

Joy grinned. "We can make up our own name, an Amerussian conglomeration."

"What is the meaning…?"

"Conglomeration? Like throwing two things together that don't… belong." Her voice was suddenly grave. "We should get ready."

* * *

"He's pulled tight as a bowstring," Fear said as he tied his hair into a ponytail. "Don't act like you didn't notice."

"I didn't," Fury replied. He was sitting on the edge of his cot, dressed and smoking the last of his English cigarettes. "He's a quiet little shit, as always."

"He's been looking at the boss like a mad wolf."

"So that's what this is about? I think you're about… eight months too late. They fucked a long time ago, and you're not going to stop them with your ugly, scrawny ass."

Fear pulled his sleeves over the swollen bumps on his arms and gritted his teeth against the pain. "You're entirely tactless, Fury. Subtlety for you is using a silencer on a cannon."

"You want me to ask you what you think is wrong with the Sorrow, don't you, you cocky little goose shit?"

"Yeah…," Fear said with a smirk.

"Well doc, what the fuck is it?"

"It's like he knows something we don't. You don't think he can…"

"Shit, Fear. It's not like he can see the future."

"You never know. He's been strange singe last week."

"He's been strange forever, twit. You just missed it for six months. Hell, he spent three of those months in a vodka coma. Shit, last cigarette. Time to get the hell out."

Joy had already met the other Cobras outside. She greeted Fear and Fury brightly, but Fear saw anxious lines on her brow.

"We'll leave for Tangmere as soon as the truck is ready," she said. "First, I need to show you something."

She dumped the six red pills into her hand. "These are suicide pills – L tablets. If you bite one, death is sure and almost instant. Each of us you will carry one to use in case of imminent capture. These pills are not optional. We are… forbidden to be taken prisoner."

The Cobras were silent as she dropped the first tablet into Pain's hand. He took it reverently as if she were bestowing knighthood.

Fury snatched a pill form her hand and muttered, "Cleaner than a goddamn pistol."

The End took his with a sanguine smile and held up to his parrot who nodded approval.

"I'll try not to get any of me on you if I take it," Fear murmured near Sorrow's ear as Joy gave him a tablet.

Sorrow looked up at Fear with the slightest smile in the corner of his mouth.

Joy closed her hand around the last pill and pushed it carefully into the bottom of her breast pocket.

* * *

"The Cobras are a means to an end for her," Astrus said.

"We are her - ," Sorrow began.

"Sons? She calls you that, doesn't she? Don't misunderstand her intentions. You are her son like you are a son of Russia, a willing sacrifice to the Motherland that is the Joy. Wouldn't any of you give your lives for her?"

"Yes," Sorrow said confidently.

"Someday, she will ask it, and I would rather not see you in that position."

"I would die to protect her!"

Astrus sighed and stepped close enough for Sorrow to feel his smoky breath. "It is not about protecting her. She will protect herself. Joy would let you die for her _ideals_. In her unit, all of her fights become yours, and she will expect you to defend her with your life."

"Our missions have come from the Philosophers, from you!"

"There are more layers in this war than you can imagine. I, too, have fallen to her enchantment."

"You tried to get her killed!"

"No!" Astrus cried, and then he softened his voice. "No. I kept her alive. Her father, God rest his soul…"

"It cannot rest knowing that you want to kill his daughter," Sorrow spat.

"James was a dear friend. I have known the Joy since she was born, since before she was born. Her mother, Alice – I'm certain you've met – had a charm much like the Joy's…"

"Astrus," Sorrow said. "Have you called me here to talk about her family?"

Astrus was so close that Sorrow could see him, could shoot him if his pistol were not back in its holster.

"The Philosophers want to kill the Joy's child, your child," Astrus said. His face was pained and genuine.

"Why?" Sorrow did not want to trust him, but he knew of no other spirit, alive or dead, who could answer the question.

"Joy is already a liability for them. She has demonstrated time and again that she is not afraid of the Philosophers. I have risked my own life and position many times to protect her." He adjusted his collar with an air of carelessness, and Sorrow saw a deep cut only a few days old down the side of his neck.

"You are a liar," Sorrow snapped.

"I regret that I have lied to you in the past." Astrus held Sorrow's glasses absently, and Sorrow considered taking them. He watched Astrus's thumb smear across the right lens and rest against the bridge. With one finger, Astrus could break them.

"I can help you save the child's life… and the Joy's. I can keep your child until the world is safer."

"I cannot trust you."

"I hate to say it, Sorrow, but you cannot trust anyone. Can you see the Joy as a mother? Do you think that she will go back to Russia with you and raise your child? Will she hold it in her blood-stained hands and rock it to sleep?"

"Do not call… my child 'it'," Sorrow growled. Astrus had moved back slowly while he talked until he blurred again. Sorrow stepped toward him so that he could see the man's eyes.

"You named your child? How sentimental," Astrus purred. The last word flicked off of his tongue disdainfully. "What's the name?"

"You do not need to know."

Astrus closed his fist loosely around the glasses.

"No name," Sorrow sighed. "We chose no name."

Astrus smiled, suddenly as amiable as he had been in Marquise. "It is best kept that way."

"I will not give him to you."

"You will, but you will do it because you want to. I estimate you have about a month to decide, but be vigilant. The American Philosophers may make their move sooner."

He held his hand out to Sorrow, flat and harmless, with the glasses resting on his palm. "I'm sorry I had to take them, chap, but I needed you to listen."

* * *

As the last light of the month of May faded on the horizon, Joy waited beside their transport craft on a runway at RAF Tangmere. The RAF men loaded the last crate for that night's supply drop near Rouen.

Fury paced impatiently behind the plane.

"You're making me tired just watching you burn energy," Pain said. He pointed at the End who was slumbering peacefully beside the roaring plane. "He's got the right idea."

Joy watched the highest stars wink into the sky with an arm around Sorrow's waist. His stomach lifted her hand with each breath, but he was cold and reticent.

"Right-right, Commander!" a round-faced man called jovially. "We're ready to load your unit up!"

"Finally," Fury grunted, hefting the pack that hid his flamethrower onto his shoulder.

Pain whacked the End across his back. "Time to go, old man."

"Grandpa! Grandpa!" squawked the parrot as Pain helped the End to his feet.

Fear followed them onto the plane with an insidious grin, and Joy caught him by the collar.

"Whatever you're planning," she snarled, "don't. You can't give us away again, or I will stuff the goddamn suicide pill in your mouth myself."

"Wasn't planning a thing, boss," he said with a flourish of a salute.

She nodded somberly and turned back to pick up her gear and a detached-looking Sorrow.

"Time to head out, Misha," she whispered.

He blinked as an acknowledgement.

"Sorrow, please. I need you _here_."

"I know." His voice was dispassionate, lower even than usual.

"Is there… something I should know?" Joy asked. "About this mission?"

Sorrow glanced at her, suddenly flustered. "I – I didn't check! I can. I will."

"You'll have time on the plane," Joy said with a smile.

She spotted a dark shape moving toward them over Sorrow's shoulder.

"Hello, Joy, Sorrow." It was David. Her hand loosened on the grip of her Colt.

David lumbered down the runway, and as he got closer, Joy saw why. He wore a flight suit laden with the same gear she carried. Then the fading light hit the barrel of the pistol he had aimed at her.

"What is this, David?" she asked calmly.

"You're not going on this mission, Joy. I will be replacing you." His voice was smooth, and his hand was steady.

"You won't kill me," she laughed.

"No. I'm doing this for you." He turned the gun on the Sorrow. "I can kill him, though."

She feigned another laugh that was shrill in Sorrow's ears. "Don't be a dolt, David. I know you need him as much as I do. Your melodrama is going nowhere. I suggest you run back to your SAS mates and let me make my own decisions."

Her voice dropped low and icy on the last few words. If David were standing any closer, Sorrow imagined, the words would have sliced through his skin. David squinted at both of them, changing his plan. His finger floated dangerously close to the trigger.

"If you're wounded," he said, switching his aim back to Joy, "then you can't go."

"What's the hold up?" Fear shouted from the door of the plane. "Oh, shit."

Sorrow moved before anyone had a chance to notice. He was a pale blur catching David's arm by the elbow and swinging his aim outward. The pistol gave its cracking report, but the bullet disappeared into the grassy field beside the runway. David pulled his knife with his free hand and caught Sorrow in the chest with it. Joy had already wrenched the pistol from his hand and stripped it with a precision she had learned as a teenager. She tossed the pieces on the gravel runway and knocked David to the ground with a kick.

"Fear! Tell the fucking pilot to go!" she shouted. "Sorrow, take our gear and board. I'll follow."

Sorrow, blood seeping through the front of his flight suit, nodded.

Joy lifted David by the front of his collar. "I don't know what's going on," she growled, "and I don't have time to find out, but you will _not_ stop me from going."

"I'm trying to protect you," he whined. "Please, Joy…"

"The hell you were!"

She slammed her fist into the side of his jaw, and his head made a crunching sound as it hit the gravel. The plane was leaving, slow as a train building steam. She dashed toward the open door where Pain reached down to drag her aboard.

The End snoozed against the inside of the fuselage. Fear sat cross-legged in the co-pilot's seat with his crossbow trained on the pilot. Fury crouched beside the Sorrow who was panting, drenched in blood.

"Shit, Joy," Fury said. "You'd better do something. I don't think he's got a lot of blood to lose."

On the runway, David scrambled to his feet. He tasted blood where he had bit his tongue, but no teeth were missing. The plane like a giant thundering crow lifted off into the night. Why had he been so rash? He had lost his only chance to warn her.

* * *

Historical Notes:

RAF Tangmere was one of the RAF bases in southern England that SOE used for sending agents to France. RAF assigned the transport craft SOE used for parachuting agents. The runways were not paved but instead were grass or gravel.


	36. La Joie

Chapter 36: La Joie

* * *

"Fear!" Joy commanded. "Leave the pilot alone, and let him fly."

"Ah, but it's so much fun having a hostage," Fear sighed, lowering the crossbow.

"Oh, thank you, ma'am!" the pilot stammered. "I really wasn't going to do nothin' but…"

"Just concentrate on flying the damn plane," she said.

"Yes'm!"

"Fury, find his field dressing."

Joy unbuttoned a pocket on her pack and pulled out a vial of white powder styptic. Not even off the ground, and they already had to use it.

"Strap in, one and all," the pilot called. "We're lifting off."

Joy sighed, "Strap him in. I think he can survive a few more minutes."

Sorrow's eyelids drooped, and he shivered with each breath. At least he was breathing; David had missed his lungs.

Once the plane was level again, she lowered the shoulder of his flight suit. The cut wasn't too deep, and David hadn't hit an artery. It was just long, stretching from the left side of his collar bone to just below his right pectoral. He grunted in pain as she spread the antiseptic and styptic over the wound. She wrapped his dressing and another from her pack around his chest and kissed his neck.

"I've never gotten that kind of treatment," Fury said. "When I got shot with a fucking hollow point in Italy, you left me with Thor as my doctor."

The pilot sniggered. "So that pale chap's the father? I've been sayin' that if they're goin' to let women fight, they ought to - ."

"You ought to shut your mouth," Fear barked, "or I'll put a bolt through it, and the boss will fly the plane."

"Calm down, Fear," Joy sighed. "Get over here, and leave the pilot be. Sorrow, I have to go over our route with the pilot. You should rest. That harness is going to hurt like hell tonight."

"I will be fine if you will seal the wound… you know…" Sorrow pursed his lips into a silent kiss.

Joy gaped at him. "Really, Misha?" She smiled and kissed the bandage.

"You're a manipulative little shit," Fear whispered once Joy had taken his place in the cockpit.

"I learned from you," Sorrow said. He leaned his head against the back of his seat and smirked.

"How far to Mathieu?" Joy asked the pilot.

"It'll be about another four hours if we don't have to divert or anythin'. Night's pretty clear. It'll be good for navigating once we're over France. Flown a couple o' these spook missions before an' it can get mighty difficult if there are a lot of clouds."

Joy watched the moon run over the English Channel, chopped into glowing slivers by the waves. In only a few days, the invasion force would be cutting through that water, innumerable ships transporting troops and war machines to the coast of France. After three hours, Joy was the only Cobra still awake. The End slept in the same place he had been when Joy boarded, Pain snored with his head on his chest and his arms crossed, Sorrow's head rested on a snoozing Fury's shoulder, and Fear curled on the floor like a cat. If they were going to be alert for the jump, the Cobras needed to wake up now. The plane was already well over land.

"Everyone up!" Joy cried. "An hour left until we go!"

"Get the hell off me," Fury grumbled, pushing Sorrow as delicately as he could muster.

Sorrow was still whiter than usual, but no blood had soaked through his bandage. He would heal.

The plane flew higher now than over the Channel. With the blackouts, the cities were harder to spot at night, but their pilot navigated expertly by his compass.

Fury crouched in the cockpit behind the co-pilot's seat and watched the stars.

"What the fuck was that?" he shouted a few minutes later.

"The fuck was what?" Joy said sharply, turning around.

"A light. A bright-ass light passed over us. You saw it too, didn't you?" he asked the pilot.

The pilot sat dumbstruck at the controls. He nodded.

"What the hell was it?" Fury said.

"I – I couldn't guess. It was like a disc. With lights, lotsa lights. It – THERE!"

The light flew toward them, a small pinprick like a star and then suddenly on top of them, something like a red orb that glowed enough to blind them for an instant as it disappeared.

"What _is_ that thing?" Pain shouted.

The orb hovered by the tail of the plane, keeping their speed.

"Let's just get the hell away from it," Joy said.

They dropped several feet and veered away, but the orb followed vigilantly, dancing around the tail like a ghost light over a marsh.

"You think it's an animal?" Pain asked.

"What? A fucking firebird?" Fury shouted.

"I just thought it moved like one…"

"It is not attacking us," Sorrow said.

"How do you know it won't?" Joy snapped.

"We cannot know, but we also cannot escape. If we go lower, we risk being spotted, correct? If we continue to run from it, we will not be paying attention when someone fires at our plane."

"Fuck," said the pilot.

"What now?" Joy asked.

"I – I thought it was fine at first, but every instrument in my panel is reading wrong. I know we're not this high, and even my compass switched directions."

"What direction were we going?"

"Southwest, but I turned to get away from it."

"We're going almost due west," Pain said.

"How'd you - ?"

"He's a mountain man. Trust him," Joy said.

The orb trailed them for another ten seconds before it darted back into the sky and winked out between the stars.

"You sure it's going to be safe to jump?" Fear asked when it was gone.

"Shit, Fear, it's never safe to jump," Fury said.

"I'm perfectly fine with goin' back to England," the pilot stammered. "Quite perfectly fine."

"We'll continue on to Mathieu," Joy said firmly.

"Hey, you have the final say, ma'am, but don't be sayin' I didn't offer to take you back."

"This mission is worth more than your life, kid," she said though the pilot was probably several years older. "If you didn't drop us at Mathieu, I would not hesitate in killing you and taking the controls myself. And a bit of advice for the future – stop calling me 'ma'am'."

"Yes, sir," the pilot replied. "Beginning a descent to the supply drop at Rouen."

They passed low enough over the Seine that Joy saw the plane's reflection on the water, and then they turned sharply north. Across the river from Rouen, four people with electric torches waited in a field. The Cobras pushed four massive barrels out the back of the plane and watched as the parachutes attached popped open. So close to the invasion, the supplies would be guns and explosives for sabotage missions, similar to the drop Parasite's circuit would have gotten earlier that week.

They continued along the Seine until the sea loomed again only a few miles north. The pilot avoided Caen by flying over the Channel for a few miles, and then they were pulling on helmets and harnesses. The End saw the lights first, his sharp old eyes spotting the formation of electric torches that marked their drop zone. The pilot climbed again and cut the engines.

"You first, Fear," Joy said.

"Ladies first. I insist," he said with a bow.

Normally she would have gone first, but she had a suspicion that Fear was planning something.

"We're here," the pilot called.

"Go, Fear," Joy said.

"We don't know what's out there."

"Fucking jump, Fear!" Fury shouted.

"We don't have all night," yelled the pilot.

"Hate to do this, you little shit," Fury muttered. He took Fear by the shoulders and shoved him out of the plane. Then he followed.

Pain gave a salute and jumped like a boy doing a cannonball into a lake. The End went after him, rifle slung across his back.

"Are you going to be okay?" Joy asked the Sorrow who was standing at the door.

"Of course," he said, and he let his body fall. She thought she heard him groan in pain when his parachute opened.

The plane rumbled off toward England, and six dark parachutes drifted over France. There were nothing but fields under them, but villagers defying the blackout marked small towns nearby. Joy saw one parachute drop into the field near the torch lights, then another – Fear and Fury. With a rushing sound, the wind caught her parachute. She was at least another fifty feet from the ground, so she let it carry her over a sprouted wheat field far from the others. The ground was harder than she had expected, and her extra weight made the fall painful. Joy gathered the parachute as the child inside her kicked in protest.

The drop zone was over a small rise, and she hurried across the wheat, not caring if she trampled any. Someone came toward her over the rise, and she drew her pistol. A figure with a feminine gait ran across the field, burdened by a long skirt. When she saw Joy, the figure dropped her hands to her knees and panted.

"Glad…," she gasped. "Glad I found you."

Joy did not lower his pistol. "Who are you?"

The woman stood, and Joy saw a red carnation in her lapel. She also saw that the woman was very beautiful – curved like a violin and wearing a purple jacket that complimented her dark hair.

"Where did the snakes go when they were driven from Ireland?" the woman asked.

"We came to France," Joy answered. "I am the Joy."

"I am Le Feu," the woman replied in French.

_The Fire. Good enough name for the Cobra Unit,_ Joy thought.

* * *

"None of them will say a word to us," a curly-haired man said to Le Feu as she and Joy approached.

"Good," Joy said. "You can speak freely now, Cobras."

"Finally," Fear mumbled.

"That's the Fear," Joy told Le Feu. "The old one's the End. The tall one is the Pain. There's the Fury with the big bag. Sorrow is the pale one."

"Everyone come with me!" Le Feu shouted. "We've made a lot of noise. Let's get the Cobras to Parasite. Quickly, now."

* * *

"So you're the Cobra Unit?" the curly-haired man asked breathlessly.

"_Casse-toi_," Fury muttered.

"Fury, be nice," Pain said. "He doesn't mean it."

"Of course not!" The boy had not lost his excitement. "You're the Pain, right? Well, I'm Sébastien, but my code name is Pierre, so call me that. The Pain is a much better code name. La Douleur sounds strange as a code name, but La Peine would be good, though very close to yours - ."

"Would you _shut up_, kid?" Fury growled

"What did he say?"

"He thinks that your code name is fine as it is," Pain lied.

"Oh, good! Le Feu gave it to me. She's ever so pretty. Well, your commander is pretty too, but I see that she's pregnant – I didn't expect that! I didn't expect a woman at all, in fact…"

"Pain, what's he saying?" Fear hissed.

"A bunch of bullshit about the Joy being pretty," Fury answered. "What the hell's with the Sorrow?"

Sorrow was still as scenery on Fear's left. He looked too uncomfortable to be asleep.

"Hey, Sorrow," Fear whispered with a nudge.

"Mmm?" Sorrow's pupils widened instantly from tiny dots when he opened his eyes.

"Oh, the Sorrow!" Pierre cried. "I've heard of him. He's a medium, right? Like he can talk to dead people? My mother thinks I might be psychic because once, when my dog ran away, I…"

"Is everything alright?" Fear asked.

"No," Sorrow replied. "It is very not alright."

"Aw, shit," Fury groaned. "What is it?"

"I cannot. Not here."

"You can tell us. The kid's mostly harmless. Hell, I don't even think he understands English."

"This is a matter… I must… Joy must know as soon as possible."

* * *

"How far to meet Parasite?" Joy asked. Her French was out of practice, so she spoke slowly.

"Four or five miles," Le Feu answered. "Why?"

"I did not expect to go so far from Mathieu."

"That is where we have your explosives, mademoiselle. We would not carry them to your drop zone."

"I'm surprised Parasite did not come to meet us."

"She is a suspicious one, Le Feu," the driver, a graying man called Clement, laughed.

"Parasite is suspicious too, La Joie. He does not go to meet agents."

"If he had known La Joie was a woman, he might have come," Clement chuckled. "Imagine my own surprise when Le Feu comes over the hill with a lovely vision like you. I am in shock that they let you come to France at all being that you are…"

"That is unimportant," Joy snapped. She disliked him, especially the way he lifted his hands from the steering wheel to gesture as he spoke.

"Silence is prudence, Clement," Le Feu said. "Heaven knows I would lead a charge with a child on each hip if it meant my country's freedom."

The car ahead of them, headlights off, turned suddenly down a gravel road under a canopy of trees. Le Feu's car passed the road without slowing.

"Aren't we following them?" Joy asked.

"They have to get a few things from the barn," Le Feu said. "We'll meet them at the farmhouse."

* * *

"They aren't following us," Fear said.

"Hey, Pierre," Pain translated. "The other car isn't following."

"Right," Pierre answered hesitantly. "We have to pick some stuff up."

The barn was big and ramshackle, held up as much by the trees that grew against it as its own timbers. Pierre heaved against a heavy metal door until it slid open.

"Pain, Fury, and Fear, I need you each to take one of those." He pointed to three large bundles lying on the dirt floor. "Take them down the hill to that yellow house with the candle in the window. Le Feu should be there when you arrive."

"Shit, these things are heavy," Fury grunted as he hefted one of the bundles.

Pain lifted his effortlessly. "At least we're going downhill with them."

Fear breathed deeply with his nostrils flared.

"Camphor," he said.

"For keeping moths away, I'll bet," Pain replied.

"Sorrow," Pierre said, "I'll need your help moving these boxes into the car."

"What did he say?" Sorrow asked Pain.

"He needs your help moving boxes to his car. I can't keep translating, so you'll just have to figure it out," Pain sighed, and with a grunt, he ducked through the door.

Pierre pointed to a stack of wooden crates labeled for vegetables and then to his car. Sorrow nodded and lifted one. It was heavier than he had expected, and the contents clinked metallic against one another. As he set the crate in the back seat, he heard a voice. It was low and immediate, and he knew it was a dead voice because, though it spoke French, he understood. It was the same man he had heard in Pierre's car.

"Careful," it hissed.

_ Is there something dangerous in the box?_

"It's just bullets. Be careful about Pierre. He just put a rag soaked in ether into his pocket."

* * *

The house was a two-story clapboard in yellow with white trimming the curtained windows. They reflected the sky glowing with moonlight like the backdrop of a shadow play. The soft clap of the car door behind Joy echoed like a rifle shot in the silence. Le Feu knocked at the front door, painted white but warped and peeling from neglect. A delicate young woman in an unflattering copper dress answered. She motioned everyone into a brightly-lit dining room with a long table built from halved logs and a many-armed hanging candelabra fitted with electric bulbs. In the indoor light, Joy saw that Le Feu's dark hair was not brown but inky black, and her skin was almost as pale as Sorrow's.

The young woman at the door, who had scampered away when they entered, returned with two men. One was broad-shouldered and slightly cross-eyed, and the other was small with a round, creamy face and narrow, almond-shaped eyes. He was Chinese.

"My name," he said in unaccented French, "is Parasite. I assume there are more of you, though I hope they are less disappointing than an old man and a pregnant girl."

"I am the Joy," Joy answered, fighting the insults that threatened to voice themselves, "and this is the End, an excellent sniper, perhaps the best in the world."

The End had chosen a seat at the table and was already snoring.

"Your French is terrible," Parasite snapped. He dropped into the chair at the head of the table. "Dandelion, get us some cold chicken for dinner. There are – " he counted on his hand – "five more coming."

Dandelion, the woman in copper, curtsied graciously and left.

"We hate to refuse your hospitality, but we already ate. We should be almost to Ryes by morning, so it would be best if - ," Joy said.

"I insist that you have dinner," Parasite said tersely.

"And I insist that you give us the supplies you are keeping and send your soldiers with us to run the radios."

"Ah, well I'm afraid you will have to wait. I am going too, and I have anticipated dinner with you all evening. You cannot leave until I've had my fill."

"Where are the supplies?"

"Please sit, La Joie. You should put less strain on your body."

"The supplies, Parasite."

He sighed. "Pierre and the rest of your men are bringing them."

"And all of you know how to use the Nazi radios?" She was still standing over him like a gargoyle over the entrance to a cathedral.

"We know how to operate them, yes. Captured one a month ago. The medium will give us the encryption, of course."  
Her stony eyes narrowed. "What do you know about him?"

"Open the goddamn door!" a voice shouted from outside.

"Le Feu, answer the door, and tell the brute to keep quiet," Parasite growled.

Joy heard the Fury grumble when Le Feu told him to carry something into the dining room, and then he, the Pain, and the Fear tromped in with cloth-covered bundles that shook the room when they hit the floor. The smell of camphor filled the room.

"Where's the Sorrow?" Joy asked.

"With Pierre still," Pain replied. "They're loading the car."

"Well, men," Parasite said with a smile, "sit down for a little dinner."

Pain translated to the other two.

"I know what the hell he said," Fury grunted.

Fear said, "Sounds pretty good to me," and sat beside the End.

"You will _not_ tell my men to do _anything_!" Joy shouted into Parasite's startled face. "This is _my_ unit, and they take orders from _me_!"

"It's funny that they listened to me," Parasite chuckled nervously.

"I won't be having dinner, Mister…," Pain said. "What's his name?"

"Parasite," Le Feu hissed.

"What's going on?" asked Fear. "I'm getting the impression that I won't be eating."

"No shit," Fury muttered.

"Now," Joy said, quiet but menacing. "Where are the explosives?"  
"I'll take you," Parasite said faintly. "Come, Clement."

"Fury, you'd better come too," Joy said.

"Actually, mademoiselle, Parasite and I have some information for you that cannot be given in front of anyone else," Clement said.

"This is my unit."

"Those were our orders, La Joie," said Parasite.

"Fine." Joy loosened the clasp on her holster when they turned away to lead her into another room.

Parasite opened a narrow door that could have been a closet. A set of cramped stairs led to a dark hallway, and Joy wrapped her fingers around the handle of her knife. Parasite clicked on an electric torch and led them by its light to an open door. As they entered, Joy saw a heavy bolted lock. With a match, Parasite lit the kerosene sconce, and a tiny bedroom in provincial blue appeared from the darkness. There were no windows, but the cream-colored wall made the room a little more cheerful. A wash basin sat on a wicker stand, and rose petals floated in the water.

"La Joie, you can come in," Parasite said as he knelt to look under the bed.

She crossed the room cautiously, eyes on Parasite and ears on Clement. She heard a faint brushing sound – Clement raising his arm, and she swung her left arm back to catch him if he grabbed for her. His hand closed on air where her shoulder hand been. As her hand found his bicep, Joy saw Parasite spring to his feet. She threw Clement to the stone floor and missed the back of Parasite's shirt as he spun to the door and slammed it.

"What the hell are you doing, Parasite?" Joy shouted through the thick door.

"La Joie," his muffled voice said. "Please understand that we weren't trying to hurt you. Let me assure you that you're much safer here."

"That's not the… goddamn point," she sighed, but she knew he had gone back up the stairs.

* * *

Historical Notes:

The styptic is a reference to the Cure screen in _Metal Gear Solid 3_. Powder styptic was used to stop a wound from bleeding in the field. A soldier's field dressing would usually be kept on his person in a small pocket.

This strange appearance of what seems to be a UFO will be important later, but it IS historically accurate. A phenomenon called "foo fighters" was common during missions over France and Germany in late 1944. Pilots saw fast-moving lights following their planes. While the cause of these lights was never determined with any real certainty, their appearances are rather well-documented.

The Seine is a major river through France.

"Casse-toi" means basically "fuck off" in French.

Parasite's Resistance members are all using code names, which was common at the time to protect their identities while they talked about one another.


	37. Orders

Chapter 37: Orders

* * *

Pierre babbled in French – entirely incomprehensible to the Sorrow, but at least the sound told him that Pierre was about twenty feet away.

_Could you fight him?_ Sorrow asked the dead Frenchman.

"Heh. Pierre's nothing. I could do it even with your scrawny body," the ghost said.

Sorrow dropped another crate onto the seat, and Pierre was quiet.

_That is exactly what you have to do,_ Sorrow said. _Now!_

Cold rushed through Sorrow's body as the ghost took control of his limbs. His body turned, and his hand snatched the rag from Pierre's fingers.

* * *

"You're pretty good for a girl," Clement said, rubbing his arm where her fingers had left red lines.

"But Parasite's a fast little fucker," she sighed. "You won't tell me how to get out, will you?"

"There is no way out. It was only supposed to be you in here, but fate had other plans."

"You mean I wasn't as weak as you expected?" Joy laughed.

"Yes."

"But still a fool." Captured. There was a suicide pill in her pocket and a microbomb in her chest.

"Clement," she asked, "are there actually explosives down here?"

Clement frowned. "Sadly… no. The boxes under the bed are tins of food for you to eat while Parasite takes over your role in this mission. Guess we'll be spreading the food a little farther."

"The Cobras are under orders to blow themselves up if captured. Parasite won't even get them out of the house without me." She crouched in front of the door. "There is a deadbolt on the outside, isn't there?"

"Yes. Mademoiselle, there is a vast difference between orders and actions." His voice came nearer as he spoke. "Please excuse our detaining you here…"

"Mmm…," Joy said, examining the doorknob.

"Parasite is under orders to protect you, to protect your child," Clement said.

His breath was warm on her ear, and she sensed his hand in the air above her shoulder. Joy punched him in the diaphragm with her elbow forcefully enough to knock him back two feet. Without wasting time to stand, she turned on her heels and tripped him as he stumbled. She pressed the barrel of her .45 into the soft flesh under his chin.

"You won't touch me," she said, pushing the barrel until he gagged. "Whose orders?"

"What?" Clement choked.

"Parasite. Under whose orders is he acting?"

* * *

Parasite made no sound as he swept into the dining room. He waved his hand from the doorway, and the Cobras heard a chorus of weapons being drawn and cocked.

"Where is the Joy?" Fear said in English. He held his crossbow against Le Feu's back.

"Fear, put that down!" Parasite shouted. He had the accent of a Frenchman who had learned English from a Brit. "My men will kill you and your comrades."

"And all of us will blow up, which is what we'd do even if you don't shoot us," Pain said, reaching slowly for his pocket.

"Don't move," the broad-shouldered man with his rifle on Pain said.

"I'd like to see you try to stop him," Fear hissed.

The broad-shouldered man looked to Parasite for a translation.

Parasite sighed, "Watch him carefully, Tonnes."

An engine rumbled and then stopped outside.

"That will be Pierre," Parasite said, and he disappeared into the hallway.

"Where the hell is Joy?" Fury spat at Dandelion, who held a shotgun he was certain she had never fired.

"La Joie is safe," Dandelion answered with a deep blush. "Parasite is keeping her safe. You will be fine too if you listen to him."

Then the Cobras heard a commanding voice they had never heard before. Parasite stood in the doorway again, stiff and tight-lipped, with his hands on his head. Behind him loomed the Sorrow with a gun to Parasite's head and a bold, vengeful face.

"Tell them what's in the bundles," Sorrow demanded in perfect French.

"S – supplies. Equipment," the trembling Parasite said.

"Tell them, La Glace!" Sorrow's voice bellowed.

"You fucking…," Parasite cried, reaching for Sorrow's gun faster than they had ever seen the Joy move.

Sorrow raised it out of his reach and hooked the man in the stomach with his knee. Parasite flopped like a rag doll against the table and crumpled to the floor. From somewhere inside his jacket, he drew a knife and tried to stab it into Pain's leg. Pain stomped on his hand as Tonnes swung the butt of his rifle into Pain's shoulder. Fear felt Dandelion's tiny hands on his throat and fired at Le Feu. Fury shoved her, and the bolt landed in her shoulder rather than her chest as she screamed.

"What the hell, Fear?" Fury shouted.

The End opened his eyes and turned his rifle on Angelus, the quietest man of Parasite's unit. Wordlessly, Angelus threw his hands into the air. Sorrow crossed the room in four monstrous steps and lifted Parasite by his crushed hand. Wrenching away from the Sorrow, Parasite reached for his gun.

"Stop!" Le Feu yelled above the furor.

Fear struggled against Dandelion's wiry fingers for another two seconds before Parasite shouted in urgent French. Le Feu stood in the middle of the brawl with a clay stick of dynamite. A fuse burned ominously under it.

"Parasite," she said, "put the gun on the floor and surrender. There is no way we can defeat the Cobras."

Parasite answered with a derisive grunt and flipped his hand upward to aim at Sorrow. Pain's hand came down on his wrist, and after a yelp from Parasite, the gun clattered across the floor.

"Angelus!" he shouted at the quiet man. "Your intelligence on the Sorrow was wrong. He was supposed to be physically weak and opposed to violence."

Sorrow laughed, his deep voice booming. "Le Feu, put that out. I'm not the Sorrow, La Glace. You there, tall fellow. Tie him up."

Parasite tried to dive for his gun, but Pain knocked him unconscious with a blow to the back of his head.

"Don't!" Dandelion screamed.

Fear clamped an arm around her neck before she could move for her shotgun. The floor shook as Tonnes fell with a tranquilizer dart in his neck.

"Thanks," Pain said when he saw a knife tumble out of Tonnes's hand.

"Not at all," the End said with a smile.

Le Feu gave Fury the extinguished stick of dynamite and dropped to her knees with her hands over her head.

"And all of the rest of them..," Sorrow said. He swayed precariously and steadied himself on the table. "The… rest…" Sorrow's eyelids closed halfway.

"Shit, Sorrow," Fury said, securing Le Feu's bonds and throwing his hands out to catch Sorrow. "After losing all that goddamned blood. You shouldn't have done that. You shouldn't - ."

Sorrow's eyes were suddenly wide and alert. "Joy. Where is she?"

"Went into that room with the gray-haired guy. You need to sit down for a damn minute."

"Pierre is tied up in the car. Bring him in," Sorrow said as he took a key from Parasite's pocket and crossed the hall.

* * *

"Shut up, Clement. Someone's coming," said Joy.

Soft footsteps halted in front of the door, and keys rattled. The first key clinked against the lock, then a second and third key. It wasn't Parasite.

"Sorrow?" Joy asked.

"Yes! I am…" A fourth key clicked in the lock, and he slid the deadbolt open.

"I must - !" he cried, and then he saw Clement. "You must both come quickly."

In the dark hallway, lit only by the flicker of the kerosene lamp in the bedroom, Joy saw a thin, glimmering line like a wire running along the corner where the wall and ceiling met. It disappeared into the darkness as they moved away from the light.

Fear was tying the last knot on a struggling Dandelion when Joy, Sorrow, and Clement stopped in the doorway. Dandelion looked up at Clement with tears on her cheeks.

"You were right, Papa!" she cried. "We were caught! They knew they knew they knew…"

"Quiet, my sweet," Fear hissed. His tongue stroked her cheek, and she screamed.

Clement stared at the girl for a moment then turned away with a deep grunt. He pushed himself out of the doorway and darted to the front door. Joy heard three silenced shots and saw him buckle against the door, his hand slipping off of the knob, before she noticed Sorrow standing grim-faced beside her with his Colt.

"Oh, fuck. Sorrow…," Fury whispered as he crept toward the dying man's body.

Sorrow closed his eyes, and Joy wondered what he was telling the spirit of the man he had just killed.

"Papa! Papa, no!" Dandelion was screaming, flailing on the dining room floor.

"Quiet her, Fear," Joy said. "Sorrow, what happened?"

"Open that bundle, Pain," said the Sorrow.

"Where…?" Pierre muttered groggily. He was propped awkwardly against one of the bundles and realized this with a cry that ended in a nauseated moan.

Pain shoved him off of the bundle and drew his knife to cut the twine.

"Don't open that!" Pierre cried.

Pain's knife sliced through the twine that held the fabric together, and the bundle rolled open. Batting made from scrapped clothing scattered across the floor like confetti, and in the center of the cloth, a man's body was bound into a crouch. His skin was bloated and blue, and brown fluid covered his shriveling lips. Dandelion screamed through her gag.

Fury glanced at Sorrow's stoic face and whispered, "Holy fuck. Who was that?"

Parasite, who was regaining consciousness from Pain's blow, grunted, "Oh, God."

"That was Parasite," Sorrow said.

"But he's…," Fury said, and then his eyes widened. "Oh. Oh, shit. Oh, holy…"

"What does this mean, boss?" asked Fear.

"Sorrow, are there bodies in the other two?" Joy asked.

"Yes. Parasite's wife in one and a man who tried to stop their murders in the other."

"Then we have to kill them." She spoke coldly, but Fear saw the pitying twitch of her lips.

"No!" Parasite shouted. "We're your prisoners. Killing us would be a war crime!"

"Wrong, Parasite, or whoever you are," Joy said. "You are only a prisoner of war if you are a soldier. You and your comrades are saboteurs."

"La Joie," Le Feu said, "his actual code name is La Glace, and he was the one who led the murder of the real Parasite."

"You are a liar, Le Feu!" Parasite shouted.

"Please spare my comrades. He made us believe that Parasite was a traitor."

"You are only trying to save your own life! You know we did all of this to protect La Joie. You knew my orders!"

"Orders from whom?" Joy asked.

Neither Le Feu nor Parasite answered.

"Kill both of us, but leave the others alive," Le Feu whispered, her dark eyes turned to Joy.

"We cannot afford prisoners, and with the evidence we have, there is no guarantee we won't be betrayed if we leave them alive." She looked at Sorrow while she spoke. He nodded somberly.

"I understand," Angelus said, the only sentence he would ever speak to the Joy.

Pain killed him with a single shot. The End drew his sidearm and shot Tonnes while he slept.

"Wait!" Parasite cried. "You need us to operate the radios!"

"My men will do it themselves," Joy said, but she knew he was right. Someone would have to operate the Nazis' radios, but it could not be Parasite. Before he could speak again, she shot him.

Fear slipped his crossbow into a holster he wore at his side and lowered his handgun to Dandelion's head.

"Please don't kill her. I'll take her place," Pierre said.

When Pain saw Fear's blank face, he translated.

"You're a fool," Fear hissed. "All of you are going to die."

He stopped Pain before he could translate to French.

"Tell him that I will take his offer," Fear said, and once he saw Pierre's encouraging smile at Dandelion, he shot the young man.

Then he breathed deeply and stepped behind Dandelion. He lowered the gun again and fired.

Of Parasite's Resistance circuit, only Le Feu was alive, kneeling with her head bowed in front of Fury. Fury's hand trembled.

"Shit," he said finally when he realized the Cobras were watching him. He dropped the gun to his side.

"I will do it for you, Fury," the End said.

"God damn it, Le Feu," Fury muttered, and throwing himself on top of her, he said, "No one is going to kill her."

"We can't take prisoners," Fear said.

"She won't be a goddamn prisoner. She's an expert on explosives, knows more than me."

"You talked to her?"

"When Sorrow went downstairs to get the Joy."

Fear sighed. "You need to stop thinking with your dick."

"Le Feu," Joy said sternly, "I will let you live if you show us where your explosives are. Do you know?"

"Yes. In fact, La Joie, I am the only one who knows."

Le Feu's pale face was tinged a sickly green.

"Shouldn't we do something about her arm?" Fury asked, touching the bolt still stuck in her shoulder.

"Don't take that out! You'll make it worse," Fear cried.

"After we get the explosives," Joy said callously.

* * *

With her uninjured arm, Le Feu slid open the false back of an upstairs wardrobe. The room around them was dim, filled with long shadows from their electric torches.

"Whose house was this?" Joy asked as Le Feu pulled a wooden box out of the hidden cabinet.

"Mine," Le Feu answered.

"And you're just going to blow it up?"

Alarm crossed Le Feu's face, and she nearly dropped the box.

"Fury, can you get the larger crates?" she asked, her voice soft and tremulous. "I can't hold them… with my arm…"

"This place holds no meaning for you?" Joy asked.

"I wasn't going to blow it up originally, but things have changed," Le Feu sighed.

"Like what?"

"We were going to leave you in that basement and take the Cobras with us. It was Parasite – La Glace's idea, of course. If they did not follow La Glace's orders, we could destroy the house remotely at any time."

"My men would have killed themselves and let you kill me before you got anywhere."

Fury paused with a crate of explosives in his hands and Le Feu's hanging coats brushing against his neck.

"They are not machines, La Joie."

"Last one," Fury said, lifting two of the crates. "These will be a lot of fucking fun to carry across France."

* * *

Sorrow froze in the middle of the dining room, his back against the table and blood speckling his face like smallpox. Blood dries quickly once it leaves the body, and a lot of blood had left these bodies; it ran together on the floor, all the same dark red. Unlike Pain, who was dragging Clement's body into the room so that he could lay by his daughter, Sorrow was unconcerned with corpses. The names of the dead – not the code names the other Cobras knew but their real names – chased through Sorrow's mind like children taunting one another in the street.

"What are we going to do with the…?" Fear asked as he crouched beside Pierre's blood-soaked body. "He wasn't a bad kid. I hate having to stare at him like this."

"He hates you," Sorrow said brusquely.

"Not much he can do now," said Fear with a timid smile.

"I wouldn't say that," the End chuckled. "I've seen some ghosts in my day, known men driven to madness by the spirits of people they killed. I even - ."

Heavy footfalls on the stairs interrupted him.

"Alright, Pain. Two more crates up there, second bedroom on the left," Joy said.

Le Feu stumbled through the doorway, and Joy caught her as she collapsed. "Fear, whatever was on your bolt, you'd better have something to cure it. I promised to let her live, and we can't go anywhere until she can walk again."

* * *

Historical Note:

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 was the first treaty to declare that a prisoner of war did not have to pay a ransom. By 1874, many of the rules for the treatment of prisoners of war were established, but it wasn't until the Third Geneva Convention in 1929 that POW status was defined. Only lawful combatants (soldiers and some guerrillas) are allowed the protections of POW status. Spies and saboteurs do not count. Of course, Parasite is asking for this status from his allies after he has obviously betrayed them. He doesn't understand the laws and customs of war. As a side note, as I believe I mentioned in an earlier chapter, the Cobra Unit, if captured, would have been killed on sight by the Germans anyway because of Hitler's Commando Order issued in 1942.


	38. In the Morning

Chapter 38: In the Morning

* * *

The first pink dawn of June rose over the fields and glittered on the dewy spider webs that had been spun overnight in the windows of the yellow farmhouse. Joy paced the long parlor while Sorrow slept where she had left him on a couch covered in faded gold and cream jacquard. Le Feu was sleeping for the last time in her bed upstairs with Fury keeping watch. The rusty odor of death drifted through the closed dining room door.

If Clement was telling the truth and if, in fact, he even _knew_ the truth, La Glace's orders were from the OSS. La Glace had known she was a woman – and pregnant. She doubted that they knew about the microbombs, but too many people seemed to know too much about this mission.

From outside, she heard the thwump of the End's gunshot.

* * *

The moon was almost down and the sun only a sliver of gray light in the distance when Le Feu had awakened in her bedroom at the farmhouse. Soft sheets the color of oatmeal were tucked tightly around her, and a gruff voice muttered a "good morning" from the darkness.

Fury sat on a chair by the window with a pale lump of what looked like clay in his hand. His hair was messy in the attractive style of an action hero, but his scowl belonged on a villain.

"Molds like Composition C," Fury said in English, and Le Feu understood enough to know that the clay he held was her plastic explosive.

"My own formula, actually," she said. Her face was proud and her eyes dark. She sat up in bed and leaned her head back against the wallpaper, colorless in the moonlight.

Her neck arched, and her throat vibrated as she spoke. "More stable even than your Composition C. It ignites only with an electrical current."

She stretched her legs over the side of the bed. They were shaved only to her knees.

"I didn't have the materials here, so I had the Brits drop them," she said. "Good men, more reliable than the Americans."

When she lifted her arms over her head, she winced at the pain in her shoulder.

"Your friend got me damn good."

Fuck. She was cursing in French. Fury felt his pants tighten over his thighs.

"So, is this the stuff you were using to blow this place up?" Fury asked, squeezing the explosive between his palms.

"That shit's expensive! Of course not. It's a combination of C-2 and dynamite."

"Fucking beautiful," Fury said.

Le Feu stood. She wore only her graying camisole. Her bare feet padded across the floor toward him. As she leaned over Fury, her black hair hung in curls over her bandaged shoulder and brushed against Fury's cheeks.

"If you want to fuck me," she whispered, saying the curse word in English, "you just have to say it."

* * *

"He's a gendarme," the End said over the unconscious body of a long-limbed blond man lying face-down in the wheat field.

"You sure?" Joy asked.

She stood barefoot in the dirt wearing the loose linen trousers Angelus had worn on his wide frame.

"He's got the uniform," the End said.

"Sorrow can say for sure. Was there anyone else?"

"I sensed no one else in either the field or the forest. The trees - ."

"Spare me your nature poetry," she said, lifting the man onto her shoulders so that his limbs dangled like the grim parody of a mink stole. "Sorrow can tell me that for certain too."

By the front door, two greenfinches fought over the last of the millet in a church-shaped bird feeder.

"All quiet here, boss," Fear said as Joy approached.

"I need you to check the woods to be sure," she said.

He grinned wickedly and bowed. "Yes, boss."

"I thought you said Sorrow - ," the End began.

"Yes, but there is no harm in certainty. Stay here to guard the house."

Pain was silhouetted in the golden sunlight, standing at the open back door with Tonnes's rifle. Sorrow closed the dining room door gently behind him as he met Joy in the hallway. The morning was still cold, but a smell like a butcher shop full of old pennies had already filled the lower storey of the house.

"Sorrow, I need you to talk to the real Parasite for me," Joy said.

"I can't. He is gone."

Sorrow looked past her, over her shoulder to the half-closed eyes of the man she carried. "You are going to kill him too."

"Yes, Sorrow. I think he's a German, but either way, he can't be left alive on this property."

"You should do it in there." He motioned toward the closed door. It was plain, probably cheap pine, knotty and lovingly polished. Not quite the sound-deadening door to an execution chamber.

The man was heavy on her shoulders; his weight burned in her thighs.

"Sorrow, are there any other men in the woods?"

He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. Joy shifted the man's weight and begged her knees not to buckle.

"Only one," Sorrow said after a moment. He smiled with only his lips. "And no German. You sent the Fear out there, and he's bringing back breakfast."

Joy put her weight on the doorknob with a heavy sigh and trudged into the dining room. The smell was stronger in here but sweeter, like a child's perfume sprayed over a side of lamb left out after Easter dinner. She dropped the man onto a bloodstain like a massive shadow on the floor. The curtains were all drawn, even the ones that had been open the night before. Carrion flies and gnats flew in clouds, almost invisible in the dim but unmistakable in their eager buzzing. She opened her mouth to breath, but the air left a coppery taste on her tongue. The man sighed in his sleep – how long would the tranquilizer keep him out? Joy felt his pockets, slid her hands along the inside of his jacket. A square of thick stitches interrupted the smooth satin lining, and she plucked a thin booklet out of the hidden pocket with two fingers.

"Rudolph Fischer," she read aloud from the SS soldbuch. "Sorry, Rudy."

She knelt with her knee on his back and pressed her gun against the top of his spine. Then she lifted it a few inches and fired. His body shuddered under her, and she heard Sorrow tense against the door.

"You could have come in with me," she called, and in fact she almost wished he had.

"I thought perhaps…," he said quietly. "I thought it was perhaps something for you to do alone."

Rudolph fell still, and Sorrow breathed a long sigh on the other side of the door.

"He was German," Sorrow said.

"I know," said Joy, pulling the door open and waving the soldbuch. "Gestapo, I'd say."

"You would be wrong," Sorrow said sadly. "He - ."

Joy raised a finger to his lips. "Nothing more. I think it may be better not to know. You and the Pain get packed up. I need to get our resident pyros."

* * *

"Good God, Le Feu, where'd you learn to do that?" Fury asked, letting out a gray breath of smoke.

She lay on her naked stomach across his knees, pale and spotless as new china.

"Hell, after that, even your shitty cigs taste good."

With a frown like the curled edge of a rose, she looked up at him. "Was I bad?" she asked in English.

"Fuck, no. I mean… English isn't my first language either. I - ."

"Shh!"

The brass doorknob creaked, and Fury threw the sheets over Le Feu, who laughed. Then Joy was in the doorway, fresh blood dotting her arms and blue eyes narrowed dangerously.

"Aw, fuck, boss," Fury groaned, leaning his bare back against the white-washed headboard.

Le Feu tossed the sheets off of her head like the hood of a cloak and grinned up at the Joy.

"You've had enough 'fuck' this morning, Fury," Joy said with no hint of a smile.

"Seriously, Joy. I haven't fucked anything but cheap whores and… and… cheap whores for five years! At least - ."

"Get dressed. We're leaving. Did you hear the gunshot? The Gestapo found us."

The door slammed behind her as punctuation. Le Feu cackled with laughter so hard that she tumbled to the floor.

"You heard the bi – boss. Get dressed," Fury snapped.

Le Feu stifled her giggles as she examined the ragged hole Fear's bolt had left in her best jacket.

* * *

The Cobra Unit and Le Feu made slow progress in the daylight. Going east instead of west toward Molay-Littry, Joy felt they were retreating. In the June sun, the linen clothing she had taken from Le Feu's house was cool and comfortable compared to the worsted wool uniform SAS had provided. As Joy could not crouch and crawl easily, she and Sorrow walked close to the edge of Mathieu, carrying their supplies in heavy wool bundles. Joy hoped they looked like refugees but still avoided going near enough to the town for anyone to approach them. Her French would never fool a native speaker, and they had neither French nor German papers.

* * *

Le Feu had changed her long skirt for trousers – tree bark brown and loose around her waist. She swept silently through the fields, slightly ahead of Fear and Fury. Her hair was pulled tightly under a floppy cap, and her bare neck curved like the handle of a porcelain teacup.

Three miles from the farmhouse, she turned, her eyes focused over Fear and Fury's heads and a green case like a leather-bound book in her hands. She opened it with a tiny key and turned a dial inside. The soft, plowed earth beneath them trembled for a moment, but the sound of the explosion itself was like a faraway train at night. Le Feu glanced once at Fear, then at Fury, dark eyes betraying her thoughts only to Fear, and continued into the sparse pine grove ahead. As he looked back at the thick smoke pouring over the hill, Fear wondered what the victory was that gave Le Feu her triumphant expression.

* * *

Sorrow shuddered with the ground beneath him as the farmhouse exploded.

"That's a lot of power," Joy said, shifting the pack on her shoulders.

The sun was still ahead of them, but deep shadows cut across her cheeks. She plodded toward their target, sometimes slipping into the rhythm of a march before catching herself. She drank from her canteen without stopping.

La Glace cursed in Sorrow's mind as if he were only now dying. During Sorrow's hour-long walk, La Glace had done nothing but moan despairingly that Le Feu was a traitorous whore worthy of an afterlife of the punishment specified by her code name. If only Sorrow were to kill her, La Glace cried, his death would be avenged, and he could rest. Sorrow ignored him. After a few days, his voice would fade into the rest.

After the explosion, La Glace was silent for a few minutes before he said calmly, "Michel, Le Feu is leading you into a trap."

Sorrow made no reply.

"Don't you wonder why I locked La Joie up, why I wanted to take over the mission?"

The Joy's hair had grown to her shoulders, held back like a sheaf of wheat by her dark bandanna.

"Do you wonder why she left Le Feu alive?"

A scar as thin as a fountain pen mark crossed under her left ear.

"They are both working for the Philosophers."

_Philosophers?_ Sorrow repeated involuntarily.

"Ah," La Glace laughed. "Now we speak the same language. You wonder how I know?"

_No._ One lock of Joy's hair was curlier than the others. It twisted over the waves like a vine up a tree.

"You will stop ignoring me when you arrive and find _nothing_."

Joy pressed her hands against the small of her back, sighed, and turned to Sorrow with a tired smile. La Glace's voice faded into a buzz like a radio on in another room.

"Are you alright, Sorrow?" Joy asked, slowing to walk beside him.

Sorrow drew his hands into fists as her fingertips touched his knuckles.

"Is someone talking to you?" she asked.

"It may be too late when you get there. You should listen to me," La Glace taunted.

Sorrow tried to concentrate on her warm hands cupping his. The air was chilly with late fog, but sweat still glued Joy's shirt tight to the skin under her breasts.

"I'm… fine. Very fine," Sorrow said. "I hear… just all of their voices at once. The ones we… the people we killed."

"Do they know something?" she asked. "About our mission?"

"What?" Could she somehow hear La Glace? He pulled his hand away, and she laughed.

"I can't read your mind, Sorrow. I just wondered. You said – when we were on the plane - ."

Joy's flat leather shoe squelched as it sank into the mud. Without thinking, Sorrow had halted at the edge of a deep rut that ran across the field. Joy stepped back onto the hard ground, her shoe covered in clumpy mud.

"Makes me wish I could wear my boots," she said, knocking the largest clods into the wheat.

"They are tracks," Sorrow said.

A pair of ruts ran dark and deep into the forest to the north.

"Yeah, and something heavy made them," Joy said. "The dirt hasn't even hardened. Whatever it was must have come through just before dawn."

"Should we - ?"

"No time. We'll check them closer on the way back – if we're not hot with Nazis on our trail."

Joy sprang lightly over the first rut and clutched her stomach.

"The hell was that for?" she muttered. "That was nothing to parachuting."

* * *

The End and the Pain waited by a honeysuckle-wrapped tree a half-mile from their first target.

"A much nicer smell than that old farmhouse," the End said as a gust shook the leaves of the honeysuckle vine.

He perched on a flat-topped rock, eyes wide and wary with no hint of fatigue. The Pain's hornets and bees circled the tiny golden flowers.

"It's a good mission," Pain said, "a real mission."

"How so?"

"'Go here. Destroy this. Kill them.' None of the games we played pretending to be German. It's like old times."

"Before we knew about the Philosophers?"

The branches of the vine-covered tree sighed in the silence.

"Someone's coming," the End said. "Three of them."

"Time to go, my beauties," Pain said, gathering the hornets onto his gloves.

* * *

"Sensed anyone yet?" Joy asked ten minutes later when she and Sorrow finally arrived.

"Haven't notice anything yet," the End said, "but we're still far away."

"Sorrow?"

"I…"

"There's nothing there, no rocket, no Nazis," said La Glace gleefully.

"Spit it out," Fury said.

"I…," Sorrow said. "I don't know anything yet."

"He's lying," Fear snapped. His red eyes glared sideways at Sorrow.

Sorrow's own eyes were round as the full moon.

"Sorrow…," Joy said.

Le Feu smiled wryly. "I hate to tell you what to do, La Joie, but perhaps we should rely on brains over super powers. Let's press on."

She took Fury's arm and disappeared into the bushes.

Not wanting to shout after her, Joy followed them silently and waved for the other Cobras to spread out.

"I could go ahead," Fear hissed beside her ear.

She nodded and watched him scramble up a tree. As they neared the clearing, Joy hung back. She wore nothing like camouflage, and she wanted to know how many men there were before taking time to change. Fear swept down from the trees and landed in the leaves with a soft thud.

"It's safe, boss," he said with a grin. "There's no one ahead."

"What do you mean?"

"Went up to the clearing. No one there."

"That's not right. You must have gone to the wrong - ."

"Boss!" came the Pain's voice through the trees. "You should see this."

Joy drew her pistol and ran at a crouch until she broke through the bushes into a wide clearing. Old tire tracks crossed the ground, dry brown ruts spotted with new grass. Pain, Fury, and Le Feu stood in the tall weeds, staring at the ground. An enormous cement slab covered half of the clearing, its many cracks filled with moss and clover.

"Like I said," Fear panted. "Nothing here."

* * *

Historical Notes:

Composition C was the original name of the RDX-based plastic explosive that would become C-4. By 1943, C-2 was the most commonly used Composition C explosive. Le Feu's compound is fictional and not meant to be C-3, which was invented around the same time this scene takes place.

"Gendarme" is a term used by the French to describe a military force that carries out police duties in France.

A European greenfinch is a small finch of a greenish-yellow color.

I'm taking a bit more of a realistic turn with the Gestapo now by giving the man Joy assumes to be Gestapo an SS soldbuch. Real Gestapo wore SS uniforms and seemed, to a casual watcher, that they were normal SS officers.


	39. Stalingrad

Chapter 39: Stalingrad

Smoke rolled through the empty streets of Stalingrad like morning fog. Fires from the Luftwaffe bombing smoldered in the ruins of department stores and apartment buildings as the first flakes of that day's snow clung to the few intact glass windows in the city. A figure in a soot-streaked white coat stood in a deep, week-old snowdrift, blue eyes peeking through a gap in a thick scarf.

"Voye!" shouted another figure in a brown woolen cape. Joy could see by his limp that it was Anton Zhukov. A tall, distinctly feminine figure walked beside him.

"Down here," Joy whispered when they were close enough to hear. "It's safe."

She slid along the wall into an alley. _There is no land beyond the Volga!_ was scrawled in Russian across the bricks, the red paint like blood in the darkness. Zhukov and his companion followed.

"Who is she?" Joy asked.

"Translator. I know your Russian – it's not good. Translator will make easy."

"My name is Lyudmila," the woman said with a bow. She was tall and stocky, but her face radiated queenly elegance.

"So now that we can speak more comfortably," Zhukov said with Lyudmila's resonant voice translating to English, "I can greet you properly. Would a kiss be rude? We are, after all, old friends."

He gazed at her expectantly, snowflakes melting in his long eyelashes.

"And now we're comrades-in-arms," Joy said crossly. "We can meet like soldiers."

She threw her scarf over her shoulder and saluted Zhukov.

Zhukov laughed. "Why salute me?"

"I heard you were a lieutenant colonel now."

"I am, but it's really thanks to you. Operation Uranus was, in so many ways, your idea." He winked, trying to look dashing, but Joy saw only the bulging cheeks and upturned nose of her childhood friend Anton.

"The Germans haven't surrendered?" Joy asked.

"No no no no no," Zhukov said. "The battle is far from over. Yevgeny Borisovich - ."

"Volgin?" Joy snapped. Zhukov's smile fell, and even Lyudmila looked alarmed.

"Don't worry, Voye. You won't run into him. He left for Moscow yesterday. He's being promoted to major."

"Good for him."

"Yes, it seems many of us have done well. Alexei told me that you have a new man in your unit." Apparently, Joy's sarcasm did not translate.

"The End talks too much," Joy said. "And we're talking too openly. Where can we meet privately?"

"Follow me," Zhukov said, opening a door that hung on only one hinge. "But what about your unit?"

"Don't worry about my men. They'll find us."

* * *

The End's head snapped up, and he squinted his enormous eyes. "There's someone coming from the north, five or ten men, maybe a quarter-mile from here," he said.

Le Feu froze like an animal caught in a flashlight beam. "The Germans?" she whispered.

"Can't say. That's the Sorrow's territory."

Sorrow lingered at the edge of the clearing, eyes unfocused and lips ajar. His fingers absently opened the catch on his holster and closed it again.

"I'm not sure it matters if they're Germans," the Pain said. "We can't be standing in the open when they arrive."

"We could ambush them," Fear said, his eyes turning a fiery orange.

"No need to kill them yet," Le Feu said. "We could watch and follow them."

"And no need to keep them alive," Fury snorted. "Sorrow can talk to them easier when they're dead."

"All any of you do is go on about him, but I haven't - ."

"Are we almost done planning?" the End asked. "They'll hear us talking any - ."

A gunshot boomed across the clearing. Sorrow's pistol tumbled into Joy's hand as she twisted the grip away from his fingers. Le Feu turned her revolver on him as she realized it was Sorrow and not the Germans who had fired.

"Traitor!" Le Feu screamed before Pain clapped a massive hand over her mouth.

Wordlessly, her face ashen, Joy dragged Sorrow into the trees. The silence was unnatural, like a film with the sound off, as Joy dropped Sorrow limply onto the soft undergrowth. She pointed to Fury and then to Sorrow. Fury glanced at Le Feu dangling feebly in Pain's arms. Her eyes bulged as she struggled to draw a breath past Pain's thick fingers. Sorrow raised his head with a look of horror.

"Don't say a goddamn word, Sorrow," Fury whispered.

Joy pointed to Fear and the End, and the three Cobras crept into an arc around the clearing.

* * *

Embers from a bombing fire across the street spiraled into the black sky. The End hunkered behind an overturned table in the gray shell of an apartment, his fur-lined cape tight over his head. Four Germans in army uniforms and thick coats huddled in the doorway of the bombed factory. One looked back, likely weighing the safety of staying in the burning building with Russian December awaiting him outside. Another man, with a rank equivalent to a captain, shouted for all of them to go into the street. With four shots, they were all dying in the snow.

* * *

"Do you not love the look of a man fresh from battle?" said Lyudmila gaily.

Her navy blue dress enveloped her like an empty parachute, and her cheeks were red with cold and wine.

"How lucky you are to have them around you every day!" When she laughed, Joy recalled Mina Berksen's miniature poodle.

"Of course," Joy said absently.

"Oh, dearest Joy! Isn't your gun ever clean enough? Put that down. Enjoy life! The Germans are dying of cold."

"Have you seen a German yet?" Joy asked.

"My mother's mother was German. Came here from - ."

"I mean, have you seen a German soldier?"

"Zhukov doesn't usually take me out into the – Joy? Are you listening?"

They were in a wide, stone-walled room – the cellar of a tavern. Blankets and bundles of equipment filled one corner, a mountain of olive drab. Pain danced with lumbering bravado to a band of improvised instruments. Even his limited knowledge of Russian was no barrier. Across the room, Fury swept his tin cup of German schnapps off of a card table made from an old wine cask. With a string of Russian curses, he knelt to unlace the boots he had just lost to a round-faced man ruddy with laughter. Fear grinned in what he must have considered a roguish way at a horrified girl who glanced around the room in search of a friend to rescue her from the conversation.

Between the pile of bundles and a wooden rack filled with bottles of captured German liquor, Sorrow crouched, one arm draped over his knee and a tin cup dangling from his fingers. Like the other Cobras, he wore a simple olive drab tunic and pants, unmarked by insignia nor, Joy knew, even a label inside. Since mid-November, when they had found him in Poland, Sorrow had been useful. On a battlefield like Stalingrad, where ghosts roamed thick in the ruins, he could map enemy positions better than any traditional reconnaissance. Still, while Sorrow was sleeping off these sessions, Joy would send Fear just to be certain.

Sorrow was decidedly worthless in combat. The glare from the snow rendered him almost blind, and he had never touched a weapon before joining the Cobra Unit. After Joy noticed that his instinct for self-preservation was lacking, the Cobras left Sorrow in the Russians' makeshift headquarters during missions.

The End stomped down the stairs, snow falling in clumps from his boots. He pulled the knitted wool cap off his bald head and saluted Joy.

"I hear we got some German wine," he said. "Let's drink to the memories of four fine young German officers."

Lyudmila's laughter crackled like radio static as the room rattled from a distant explosion.

"You listen, Joy?" Zhukov called from the top of the stairs. "Alexei is demon. He should leave town, I think. His grandson he make jealousy."

"Speak Russian, Lieutenant Colonel!" Lyudmila whispered sharply, her cheeks flushing.

The End flung his cape over a chair. "Vassili will get over it."

A tuft of blonde passed behind Zhukov's right shoulder. Joy excused herself, threw the End's heavy cape over her shoulders, and tore up the stairs after Sorrow.

Snow fell thick over the darkening city, but Joy found Sorrow quickly in his green uniform. She shouted his code name, then his Russian name, but he continued trance-like down the empty street. After a few yards, black smoke mingled with the snow so that the flakes looked like falling ashes. Sorrow turned down a street on their right, toward the Volga. He knocked at the back door of a canning factory, and a ragged man in German uniform appeared at the door.

"Who are you?" the soldier asked, his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"My name is Michael, sir," Sorrow said. "I am here to see Dr. Reuber."

"Dr. Reuber's busy! If you aren't hurt, go back to your bunker."

Another man moved into the doorway, not much older than Zhukov and bespectacled. He wore no uniform but carried a small bag.

"I am the doctor, young man," he said kindly. "You wished to see me?"

"There are – there was a bomb, and three Ger– soldiers were hit. I can show you. They are under rubble."

The doctor motioned for Sorrow to lead him and followed down two more streets to a pile of crumbled cement surrounded by a cloud of settling dust. One man was obviously dead, his chest crushed by a section of the building's eaves. Another moaned when he saw Sorrow and the doctor before he fell silent. Dr. Reuber knelt beside him and opened his bag.

"Ignore him," Sorrow said. "He is gone. This one can be saved."

The final man was unconscious. A trickle of blood ran from his head across one chunk of cement, and his right leg was pinned under another. Sorrow shivered. His cheeks and nose shined vivid red against his pale face; his lips were an icy blue.

"Michael!" Joy shouted in German. She scrambled over the rubble and hoped the doctor would assume her Russian cape was a spoil of war. "We have to go back to the bunker before you freeze to death."

She enveloped Sorrow in the cape. His frigid body shuddered. Silently, as they turned away from the gaping doctor, she told herself to keep a closer watch on the Sorrow.

* * *

Joy breathed deeply and said again, "Sorrow, I need you to tell me where they went."

"La Joie," Le Feu said, "you could have left one alive to interrogate."

"What would you have had me threaten him with? Death or more death?"

"That is not how interrogation works."

"And we don't have time to do it right. Leaving one alive would have been too great a risk."

"_He's_ a goddamn risk!" Fury shouted.

"He's also part of my unit!"

"Just because you're fucking him, it doesn't make him - ."

"Regenwurm…," Sorrow whispered, his face white with fear.

"What?" Le Feu said. "I don't know Russian."

"It's German," Joy said. "'Earthworm'."

"The tracks?" Fear asked.

"Were going north," Joy said. "We'll meet them diagonally. Pain, Fear, move the bodies into woods… and take their uniforms."

"La Joie!" Le Feu cried. "Parasite may have been a fool, but I know wearing the enemy's uniform is a war crime."

Joy lifted Sorrow roughly by the arm. "And one we've all committed already… including you."

Le Feu smiled vaguely and snatched her pack from Pain's hands. "Shall we, then?"

"Dammit, Joy," Fury said. "Don't we have a little issue to resolve?"

"Obviously this platform was never used. We'd see the - ."

"The fucking Sorrow."

"Relax, Fury. He won't do it again," Le Feu purred. "Let us get on with this."

* * *

"It is Christmas," Sorrow said in German one late December night when the Cobras sat on the floor of the cellar with the last of the wine in their tin cups.

"It's only the twenty-fourth," Fury said. "It's not your goddamn Christmas."

"The Germans are celebrating."

"Let them. Better for us if we catch them drunk."

Fear flung his arm over Fury's shoulder, spilling wine down the front of his comrade's uniform.

"Great, you fucking dunce!" Fury shouted. "I'll have to wear an old jacket and smell worse than you."

"It's a Christmas present, Fury," Fear said with a flick of his tongue.

"You don't even celebrate Christmas here," Joy said, squeezing herself a seat between Fury and Pain.

"I celebrate Christmas," the End said. "Two weeks from now!"

"For Joy and me, Christmas is tomorrow," Pain said.

The End put his hands together in front of him. "In that case, Snow Maiden, where is my gift?"

"Here's a present – we head to Tatsinskaya tomorrow morning and kill a few Nazis."

"She really _is _like the Snow Maiden," Fury said. "Not a shred of love in her frozen heart."

Lyudmila stopped as she passed and spat in Russian, "Best if she doesn't fall in love, lest she melt."  
Sorrow stared at her, horrified.

An explosion shook the building so hard that two lamps crashed to the floor, sending puddles of burning oil across the cement surface.

"Move everything flammable!" Pain shouted, and Lyudmila translated. He threw an oil-soaked jacket into the corner before the flames reached it.

Joy and the End grabbed their rifles and rushed to the stairs.

"The lieutenant colonel," Sorrow said as Joy reached the door at the top. "Lieutenant Colonel Zhukov is dead."

Lyudmila screamed, a long wail of a cry that ended in a rasping sob.

Joy nodded, and she and the End raced to the blown-out windows of the second storey.

Smoke clogged the old bedrooms, and Joy knew there would only be a minute or two before they had to leave the burning building. Already, German soldiers were firing at the west doorway.

"Get the officers first," Joy said before she ran to the east window.

For now, the Russians could make a safe exit on that side. Joy hoped Sorrow would tell them to use the east door. She rejoined the End on the west side.

"Got their officers. One was a colonel," the End said. "I don't think they noticed yet."

A small cylinder flew out the door beneath them and exploded in a cloud of white smoke.

* * *

Sorrow felt Fury's hand on his arm, and his legs pumped to keep up. He saw nothing but white. The German soldiers shouted around him, but he heard only the colonel's deep voice.

"Can you do it, Sorrow?" Fury said. "Can you mimic his voice?"

"I think so. What is this?"

Lying in the middle of a mound of bricks was a huge cement dome on its side.

"I – I think it was from a brass foundry or something. I don't fucking know. Fear and I found it right after we got to Stalingrad. Just do this before they find his body."

* * *

Joy heard shots on the east side of the building.

"Fuck!" she shouted, running to that window again. "We're fucking surrounded!"

Flames crawled up from the windows to her left, and she choked. Only one wall between them and the fire. She crouched with her shoulder against the window frame and fired at the first German she saw.

"Hold your fire!" boomed a throaty German voice from the west. "These are fellow countrymen you are attacking here!"

The voice was somehow familiar. The sound of gunfire died slowly.

"Turn back, men! We bombed the wrong building!"

A stream of Russian soldiers poured out the east door in silence.

* * *

"I have always sort of admired the Nazi uniforms," Le Feu said as she pulled her hair under the cap Pain had taken from one of the SS officers.

"You wouldn't if you had frozen to death in one at Stalingrad," the End said.

"Still, they have style. A well-dressed army commands a level of respect."

Pain buttoned his uniform tight across his chest, and the buttonholes bowed. "Not like us ragtags, eh?"

"Why don't I get a damn uniform?" Fear asked.

"You'll be up in the trees," Joy said. "Ready to go?"

They marched diagonally through the trees to the tracks. Here, branches had been cut to make space for something mammoth, and the ruts were so deep that they exposed the roots.

"Anything else you know about the regenwurm, Sorrow?" Joy asked as they followed the tracks north.

"Not enough. It is confusing. I am not sure the SS men ever saw it."

"I see."

"I did not mean… back there…"

"You tried to kill Le Feu."

"I did. La Glace did. But I was going to let him. He knew that the bomb was not there, so I trusted him. I let him in to speak, and he had my gun before I knew…" Sorrow stopped, his eyes closed. "Thank you for stopping me, but you should have killed me."

"Why would I do that?"

"I was a threat. That is why we killed Clement, Dandelion, Tonnes…"

"Sorrow! That's not how it works."

"And David. You hurt him when he tries to stop you, but me… I try to kill someone we need, and you do nothing."

"I can't… I… my unit…"

"I love you also, Joy." Sorrow tilted his head toward the green light of the forest canopy and smiled.

* * *

Historical Notes:

"There is no land beyond the Volga!" was one of the slogans used by the USSR's Communist Party to encourage the Soviet soldiers fighting in Stalingrad.

Operation Uranus was a Red Army offensive that trapped the Germans' Sixth Army in Stalingrad near the Volga River.

The Russians captured a large amount of German liquor that was being brought into Stalingrad.

Dr. Reuber was a real person, and there is a little Easter egg for people who want to look him up. It's too long and interesting a story to put in a footnote.

The "Snow Maiden", or _Snegorochka_, is a Russian fairy tale character often considered to be the granddaughter of the Russian Father Christmas in modern holiday celebrations. Stories of the Snow Maiden have been made into tragic operas since at least the 1870s. In the most common telling of her story, she falls in love with a mortal but because she is made of snow, she cannot express her love. When she is given the ability to express love (usually by her mother who represents spring), she melts or evaporates.

Tatsinskaya was an airstrip that the Red Army took back from the Germans around Christmas 1942.


	40. The Rocket

Chapter 40: The Rocket

* * *

Fear dropped onto the solid ground between the tracks, his trickster face solemn.

"Joy," he whispered, "it's here. The rocket is here."

"Shit. Let's have some fun," Fury said.

"Quiet, Fury," Fear hissed. "They're closer than you think."

"How close?" Le Feu asked.

"Two hundred meters, probably."

Joy motioned to Pain and the End. She looked at each of the Cobras and Le Feu.

"It's time," she said, her eyes glinting like the edge of a knife.

* * *

The buttons on Sorrow's uniform flashed in the sunlight as he led the Cobras toward the launch site. Le Feu slinked behind Pain, head down and arms crossed over her breasts. Even Fury treaded lightly over the dry twigs, letting silence hang in the air like a banner.

Another set of tracks, narrower and shallower, joined the first. The deep rumbling which had grown gradually louder as they walked was now a throbbing mechanical roar. Sorrow stopped suddenly, his face milky white and blood on his lip where he had been biting it.

"Not now, Sorrow," Fury murmured.

"Give me…," Sorrow said. "Give me a moment."

His voice trembled, and his hands curled tightly in their leather gloves. A muscle twitched under his left eye. Then he tipped his head back with a grateful sigh and marched forward again.

"What was that?" Le Feu whispered sharply.

Pain laughed under his breath. "Something that almost killed you back there. He sometimes gets… overwhelmed. Powerful ghosts. Too many ghosts."

"And on and on about ghosts. I'd say you were all lunatics, but you might think it was a compliment."

* * *

A man shouted nearby, but the words were lost in the noise. Then it repeated, louder, and the noise died with a sputter. Down the wide corridor formed by the tracks, three men in German uniform marched with rifles ready. Sorrow led his band into their path. Joy and Fear watched from the forest as the soldiers lowered their rifles, and their leader saluted Sorrow. The Cobras followed their German hosts through a gap in the trees that opened like a tunnel on another clearing, this one alive with men and machines. The soldiers were in the uniforms of the panzer corps, but the hulking machine which dominated the clearing was no tank.

The trailer was 50 feet long with a metal lift frame that reached just as high above the soldiers. The rocket, painted with a patchwork of camouflage but still gleaming in the sun, tapered to a point against the clear sky.

"That's the V2," Joy whispered to the forest. "That's the goddamned V2."

"Sure as hell is," Fear said. "It's a shame to destroy something so pretty. That thing flying through the sky would be a sight to see before the explosion turns your bones into a pile of ashes."

"They won't see it. They won't even hear it."

Joy's fingernails sank into the gray bark of an oak tree. Her chest heaved with quick, shallow breaths. Anyone else would think she was angry, but Fear saw her physical pain in the way she clamped her jaw with her chin jutting slightly.

* * *

In the brilliant, austere light of the clearing, Sorrow asked how soon the rocket would be ready to launch.

"We're right on schedule," answered the German, whose name seemed to be Friedelheim.

"When - ," Sorrow heard Fury's voice begin, but it was muffled, and Le Feu's satiny voice, dropped as low and gruff as she could, replaced it.

"Excuse me, Herr Friedelheim," Le Feu said in German. Sorrow noticed a strange accent that drew out the long "e". "We were only given an estimated time – about eleven. It seems we were not entrusted with the exact launch time."

_Fifteen after eleven,_ Sorrow thought. One of the SS officers had told him.

"Ah, yes," Friedelheim laughed. "In case something happened to you on the way here… a change in your sex, perhaps, Fraulein?"

* * *

Fear knew that Sorrow was timid, but in his SS uniform, silver-rimmed glasses gleaming in the sun, Sorrow appeared almost threatening. Sorrow waved his hand toward the rocket. The low rumble had begun again, the shuddering of the pump that filled the rocket with liquid fuel.

Then Fury opened his mouth, and Le Feu slapped a hand in an over-sized glove over it. Joy waved her own hand between Fear and the scene in the clearing. As Le Feu stepped in front of Fury to speak to the German soldier, Joy narrowed her eyes at Fear. She swept them to her left with the slightest nod and ran at a crouch toward the other Cobras.

* * *

Seventeen men, and they had warning. If the soldiers had any training, they would expect someone to fire from the forest. At least five Germans would fit in the armored launch support vehicle which was built to withstand the blast of the rocket lifting off and would certainly stop their bullets. It stood empty now, but the more cowardly men would retreat to it when shots rang. Le Feu was still talking, but Joy saw the soldier's eyes flit down to Le Feu's chest through her scope. If any Cobras survived, they would have to destroy the next rocket before anyone realized this launch had been sabotaged. She shot the radio operator.

* * *

Friedelheim's laugh was cut short by the echo of Joy's first suppressed shot. A second shot rang much closer, and he damned his pride in his own cleverness as he fell with the End's tranquilizer dart in his neck. If he had arrested all of them the moment he suspected… Friedelheim's breath rattled noisily in his sleep.

* * *

The last thing Frank Hoeffler knew for certain was that something quite large had landed in the tree above him. As his coughs burst from his lips, thick with blood, a moment later, he told himself that it could not have been the creature he thought he saw – red eyes like blazing rubies, a mess of limbs – a man's face on a spider's body. Its poisoned fang was sunk deep in his throat.

An explosion at the base of the launch platform threw the two men who were fueling the rocket from the scaffold. One thudded against the tanker, leaving a bloody smear, and the other landed at Fear's feet with a horrid squelch.

"Holy mother of God, Fury!" Fear shouted. "Not so close to the rocket!"

Fury drew Fear's sidearm from its holster and shot a soldier who was aiming at Pain. Another man dropped with a crossbow bolt in his leg and Pain's bullet in his chest.

"Fear, you don't know a damn thing about explosives," Fury said over the clatter of gunfire and the continuous thudding of the tanker which spilled fuel into the grass like highly flammable bile.

With three measured shots, Sorrow downed two more soldiers and ducked, wild-eyed, behind the metal platform which held the rocket. A dozen bees shot past him like bullets and hit another soldier.

"Where's Le Feu?" Fear asked.

"Oh, shit," Fury muttered, pausing with his finger in the pin of a grenade.

* * *

A noose, invisible and imaginary, tightened around Joy's abdomen. Pain burned at the tops of her thighs. The taste of rotten fruit rose to the back of her mouth, and the colors of the trees, the sun, the camouflaged rocket, the flash of an explosion blurred like a kaleidoscope gone mad.

Joy blinked; a soldier with a wounded thigh dragged himself through the grass toward the open-backed truck which held the Germans' communication equipment. The radio operator's body slumped over a table, a receiver inches from her stiff right hand and her legs splayed across the chair like a marionette with its strings cut. Joy was close, close enough to see a black garter clipped onto the operator's stocking. Joy pulled the pin of a grenade and tossed it into the back of the truck.

Something black tore like a cannonball across the clearing – Le Feu, her hair streaming behind her. She glanced to each side and climbed through the door of the armored vehicle. The gun on its front swung over the scene, strafing the area where Pain and the End had been with bullets. The End had disappeared into the grass, and Pain was now behind the scaffold, throwing his enormous body onto Sorrow. Joy lowered her head and ran through the trees to the armored vehicle. The gun was now silent, and a soldier dangled from the doorway. Joy felt for a pulse. Nothing. He wouldn't moan if she climbed onto him.

Le Feu was inside, crouched on the metal floor. She straightened as she heard Joy enter and turned slowly.

"Was machst du?" Joy asked.

"Ich - ," Le Feu began to answer. Then she laughed. "Oh, it's you, La Joie! You can put your gun down."

Joy's finger slid down to the trigger. "What are you doing?"

"Destroying this thing." Le Feu kept her eyes steadily on Joy's.

"Did I order you to do that?"

"No," Le Feu said tentatively. "But you're not even - ."

"What?" Joy stepped closer. There was a brown package at the base of the wall where Le Feu had been crouching. "Your commanding officer?"

"I'm not even a soldier, La Joie." Le Feu's eyes were long and narrow with heavy bottom lids. Even in the SS uniform, slightly too large, she was too glamorous, Hollywood's version of a female soldier.

"I let you live," Joy said, "so that you could serve my unit as a soldier, but it's not too late for you to die as a traitor. Get the Fury."

"I - ."

"If you don't, we'll all be dead. You'll just be first."

Le Feu crept past Joy and shoved the soldier's body through the door before jumping out herself.

The command console was a mess of buttons and knobs. A section of it was burnt black, blasted away by a small explosion. Charred scraps of metal littered the floor in front of the console. Joy knelt to touch one – still hot.

Boots pounded up the metal steps, and Joy stood. Fury burst through the doorway. Joy slipped her pistol back into her holster. Silence had fallen in the clearing outside.

"It's over?" Joy asked.

"Yeah," Le Feu said.

Fury frowned. "Fear and Pain are killing the men the End got."

"Le Feu," Joy said, "tell the others to arrange the bodies like they've been preparing for the launch."

"Why?" Le Feu sniffed.

"Do it, Le Feu."

Le Feu nodded once and left. Joy slammed the heavy door and leaned against it.

"She rigged this thing with explosives," Joy said. "How do I disarm them?"

"Shit, and you were in here alone?" Fury grunted.

"Just disarm them, Fury."

Joy crouched again beside the shards on the floor. Cupped in the largest piece was a bird's nest of wires. She pinched one piece between her fingers. Aluminum.

"You don't trust her, then?" Joy asked, glancing at Fury.

"Was I supposed to?" Fury asked. He ran a finger gingerly along the top of one of the charges.

"Not at all," Joy said with a smile, and she stuffed the tiny piece of metal into her pocket.

* * *

Historical Notes:

V2 rockets were painted with a camouflage pattern that originally was in large patches but became more broken up by the end of the war.

I don't actually know what the console looked like from which they controlled the launch of the rocket, but the armored launch support vehicle was meant to hold several crew members while they controlled the launch.


	41. Childish Things

Chapter 41: Childish Things

The blast shook leaves from the trees three miles away where the Cobra Unit hunkered in the half-burnt ruin of a long-abandoned shed. Trees poked through the crumbling roof, and a bent wheel against the wall had been engulfed by hogweed.

Le Feu's remote detonator was a simple device but brilliant. Yet the woman used it with no pride in her face; her invention was merely a tool doing its job. When Joy was inside the armored vehicle, Le Feu could have detonated the bombs easily, and, Joy thought as the dust settled in the shed, if it had been any other Cobra, she may have.

Sorrow looked up from the floor, his lips a grim line. Joy caught his eyes and narrowed her own. He nodded.

"We'll be going out for a moment," Joy said, brushing dust and leaves from her pants. "Sorrow?"

The trees around the shed were young – reed-like saplings that grew tall to reach the sunlight before adding the girth required to survive a storm. Gray clouds had moved over the forest since they had left the rocket, and the wind blew from the ground up their backs.

"No one found them?" Joy asked.

"No. We were lucky in that," Sorrow said.

According to Fury, the explosion, with all of the liquid fuel, would have started a fire too hot for anyone to approach for at least a day. The first one would look like an accident.

"And we may be lucky again. One of the men who was with the fueling truck was to meet another fueling truck near Ryes today."

"Where?"

"Marche Road."

"Can he take us there?"

Sorrow curled his finger around his bottom lip and nodded. "He may – he may give me trouble. I can be unarmed…"

"Good. We can replace the tanker crew with you and Fury. One short, but we can't risk anyone suspicious. We start the launch as we had planned, and – "

"There is… There is another thing."

"Le Feu."

"Yes." Sorrow glanced back at the shed as if expecting her to come at the sound of her name. "One of the Germans knew her. The man in the armor… panzer… tank-thing."

"Yes?"

"Not well. They were not… friends. He only – he knew her face."

"Perhaps not unusual. She owned a large farm in Mathieu."

"It is much different. No, he knew nothing of her farm. Only of… blitzkugel."

"Ball-lightning. What's the connection?"

"He does not know… or he is not saying. I think it must be – "

"I know," Joy sighed. "I'll handle it. You have enough worry. Your gun?"

* * *

It was less than five hours later that Fury was maneuvering the slow-moving tanker down a forgotten gravel road. Fury tightened his grip on the steering wheel after a particularly deep rut threw him against the hard back of his seat.  
"Joy should have come with us," he said. "God knows she shouldn't be walking, you know, in her state."

Sorrow wiped cold sweat from his neck and nodded.

"Sorrow? You hear me, little creep? You should have taken her to a fucking doctor back in fucking England! It's damned irresponsible!"

There was a small, choked cough from Sorrow's seat.

Fury was saying something childish and trivial. His words ground like the rumble of a starting engine into Sorrow's head but were never heard. Sorrow felt like the truck that takes a dangerous criminal to jail, one with three prisoners inside and weak bars that were being pried open slowly.

"At the fork ahead, turn left," Sorrow said, his voice almost mechanical.

* * *

The aroma of coffee from Joy's mug rose dark and warm to her nose. Real coffee, not the crushed nuts flavored with chicory that the Russian navy brought into Stalingrad wrapped in damp paper.

"I didn't bring the coffee just for you to sniff it," said Colonel Fifer, a white-toothed smile forming below his dark mustache.

"It's too hot," Joy said.

"Nonsense. I have no reason to poison you, if that's what you're worried about."

He sipped from his own mug, and the steam mingled with his breath in the cold, dim room deep in the cellar of an apartment block. The room had been part of a cistern winding under Stalingrad. A wool curtain hung between the tunnels outside, where soldiers slept on the floor, and this cramped space, a meeting room for officers.

"Ah, " Fifer said, "I know why you won't drink it."

Fifer's blue eyes weren't the shrewd crystalline eyes of a tactician, but in the few minutes Joy had known Fifer, those eyes had read her.

"You don't want to take something others can't have." He lifted his eyebrows, asking silently whether he had been right.

"Yes, sir," Joy said.

"Baffling. Truly baffling. The only daughter of one of the world's richest men, and you're worried about a bunch of soldiers – in Russia, of all places."

"The Soviet Union, sir."

"What about it?"

"That's what they call their country, sir." Joy glanced down at her coffee. No more steam. It was getting cold. Several mortar blasts pounded far above them.

"You really should drink your coffee," Fifer said. "It may be a long while before the Philosophers can get anything so fine to you again."

"The battle for Stalingrad is almost over. The Germans have stopped sending reinforcements. Their airstrip was taken weeks ago."

"In an offensive led by you, I heard."

"By my unit, sir."

"Special Operations Team Zero?" His eyes brightened, and Joy knew that this was the subject he had come to discuss. "Yes, an interesting project the Philosophers have been funding. Only problem is that you've been so secretive about it that we aren't sure _what_ we're funding."

"My father – "

Fifer's mood changed instantly. His kind smile became a savage leer, and he was on his feet like a cobra about to strike. "Your father loves his secrets as much as you," he snarled. Then he sat again and sipped his coffee, sorting his words. "Most of the original Wiseman's Committee is dead."

"All but my father. I know, sir."

"And you also know that those of us who were appointed and elected to replace them wish to continue their work. We mean to end this war before it destroys the world. This is a noble cause." He said it as if reassuring himself that, indeed, the world was worth saving.

"A noble cause, sir." Where was he going? He twisted his fingers nervously around the handle of his mug.

"The new Philosophers are not so wealthy as men like your father. We lived in discomfort through the Depression. We can be trusted to know what the world needs." Fifer paused and straightened. He was an officer, a leader, and he had shown weakness in front of a woman. "In one week, whether the Germans have surrendered or not, you and your unit will leave Stalingrad and meet another contact in Minsk."

"My father was outvoted again," Joy said grimly.

"No. He got his way this time and for the last time. He has retired from the Philosophers."

"I see."

"I'm certain you do, and you'll see more as time goes on. Your unit has been renamed. 'Covert Operations Battle Reinforcement Allied Unit', or the Cobra Unit. Apparently the cobra reference is a joke from one of your friends in L-Detachment."

"Hm-mmm… The coffee's not bad."

"El – "

"Joy."

Fifer sighed. "Joy, everything is changing around us. The world is being torn apart a little more each day. We all have to change with the times."

_Know the times, or the times will change you,_ Joy thought, but she listened in silence. It was something her father had said.

"You will have to be more transparent with us. Telling us about the new man in your unit, as a start."

"The Sorrow?"

"Don't play dumb, Joy. We know he has psychic powers."

Joy lowered her mug and stared at Fifer. He was twice her age, but he was also at her mercy. The Philosophers wanted Joy on their side. A cough sounded in the chamber outside, amplified by the stone walls and muffled by the curtain.

"I'll tell you," Joy said, "but you'll have to let me do one thing."

"What?" Fifer asked. His mouth twitched impatiently. Good. He was likely to agree to anything.

"I get to tell my unit about the Philosophers."

* * *

"Aren't you boys done yet?" The voice mingled with the roar of the pump, and Sorrow wasn't sure for a moment that he'd heard anything. He glanced down. Forty feet below, a man with an enormous bald spot on the top of his head waved to Sorrow impatiently.

"Fury!" Sorrow shouted over the noise. "How much longer?"

"Just a devil's damn minute!" Fury squeezed a chunk of Le Feu's explosive in his palm and slapped it violently on the side of the rocket.

"The fuel is almost full, and I cannot turn off the pump until you're done," Sorrow said. He glanced down at the soldier who was now bobbing on his toes, hands clasped behind his back.

"Turn it lower, then!" Fury yelled.

"It is as low as I can turn it."

The man had started to wander to Fury's side of the rocket.

"We are almost done!" Sorrow called, hoping his voice would catch the soldier's attention long enough for Fury to finish.

"What?" the soldier asked.

"… Launch in five minutes!" an amplified voice boomed from the armored support vehicle.

The soldier below the rocket grimaced. "You two hurry. We _will_ launch on time."

* * *

Joy felt hot breath on her ear and tensed.

"What the hell are they doing out there?" Fear hissed.

"Wasting time," Joy said. Fear's hand fell heavily onto her shoulder, crept down her back, massaged her shoulder blade. She shook him off.

Through her scope, she saw Sorrow turn his eyes toward the forest where the End was waiting, crouched on a mossy table of rock. Sorrow peered around the rocket at Fury and then down at the fuel pump which shuddered violently. He shouted again and Fury waved a hand to quiet him. Sorrow climbed down to the pump, which now sounded like a log being thrown against a metal wall, and pulled a switch. The pump clattered to a halt, and a splash of brown fuel like weak tea burst from the end of the pump and trickled into the grass.

"You seem tense, boss," Fear said.

Joy kept her eye on the scope. Sorrow was climbing up the ladder again. His ears and cheeks were red with the beginning of a sunburn.

"Launch in four minutes!" Without the noise of the pump to deaden it, the voice thundered through the woods.

Sorrow reached the platform again and pushed his glasses back up his sweat-slicked nose.

"Breathe, boss. Looks like they're done," Fear said.

Joy took a long, labored breath and whispered, "Not done yet. Get back to your position."

Her arms were statue still.

"Are you hurt, boss?" Joy's breaths were short again. Her upper lip tightened as she balled her tongue against the back of her teeth.

In the clearing, Fury was following Sorrow down the ladder. He jumped from the fifth rung as the voice announced, "Launch in three minutes."

The soldier who had been watching Fury and Sorrow pounded on the door of the armored vehicle. After a brief exchange with someone inside, the voice said, "Launch delayed. Five minutes to launch."

Men scrambled into the other vehicles. Sorrow tossed a coil of hose to Fury, and he wound it onto the back of the fuel tank. At four minutes to launch, Fury and Sorrow were driving slowly down the muddy path out of the clearing.

* * *

"It would be faster if they walked," Le Feu sniffed as the fueling truck rumbled twenty feet away. A motorcycle that had left the clearing a minute later lay fifty feet off the road, two dead Germans sprawled beside it.

"It would look suspicious if they walked," Pain said.

"I'm not stupid, Pain," Le Feu said. "It was a joke. An irony, if you will. There is something absurd about it."

"Right," said Pain, picking up his pack from the underbrush and following the truck at a distance.

"Three minutes to launch," the voice said.

The truck crunched gravel under its enormous tires as it slowed to a stop on one side of the road. Fury slammed the door behind him.

"Glad to ditch that piece of shit," he said.

Fear landed on the hood of the truck and slid to the ground. "Sure the explosives will destroy that armored monstrosity?"

"Sure as it will destroy _us_ if we don't get the hell away," Le Feu said, marching briskly past the truck and deeper into the darkening forest.

"Not even a moment to stop for dinner?" Fear asked as Joy reached the gravel road.

"Two minutes to launch."

"Dinner's in three," Joy said. She tightened the straps on her backpack and set the motorcycle upright.

* * *

It was twenty minutes of driving, Joy and Sorrow on the motorcycle and the others in a slower-moving truck, before the gravel road led them into a half-razed field. Cover was an orchard of pear trees fifty feet from the road. No vehicle passed. A fire burned in the forest, fed by rocket fuel and slowed by a cold drizzle which came with the night. Le Feu curled under Fury's arm like a child. Pain and the End crouched under a tarp, backs together, snoring quietly.

Joy unlaced her boots and set them to one side, ready to slip onto her feet in a moment. The drizzle became a steady rain which dripped in an irregular rhythm on her unit's tarps. The grass was slick on the soles of her feet. She dug her bare heels into the earth and arched her body back until she could see the sky. In the hazy light of the hidden moon, the rain fell in lines like the sketch of a tunnel with its vanishing point drawn too close. The child was moving, trying to get comfortable with his mother's new position. Joy sat up and he stopped. Nausea again like decompression sickness. She wrapped her toes around the stems of a clump of dandelions and pulled her feet toward her, snapping their long necks with a series of pops.

"You have not slept," said a low voice from the direction of their camp.

"I don't need to sleep, Sorrow," Joy said, letting the golden heads fall into the grass.

"Want and need. These are different." Sorrow sat beside her on the ground, a hooded jacket pulled loosely over his head but his glasses still coated with tiny droplets.

"Tomorrow, we leave for Nonant."

Sorrow looked down into the grass. "No," he said, "there are no rockets that far south. The closest is at Longues-sur-Mer."

"The last two have been – "

"You will ask next if I am certain. I am. Someone sent a message to warn the crew at Longues-sur-Mer."

"When? We killed everyone who had left in the other vehicles."

"He was there at the blast, survived long enough to send a message."

Joy sprang to her feet and shoved them back into her boots.

"What are you doing?" Sorrow cried.

"We have to get there before they move the rocket."

"Everyone is sleeping."

"Wake them. We've already lost two hours."

"Just sleep. If they move the rocket, I will find it again."

"Fear, up!" Joy shouted, pulling Fear from under his tarp into the rain. "The End!"

The old man snored undisturbed as Pain awoke with a start.

"Fury!"

"The fuck?"

"Mmm? Get off me, mum," Le Feu moaned in French.

"The Germans got warning," Joy said coldly when the Cobras seemed awake enough to understand.

"We're going to Nonant at this hour?" Pain asked.

"And they've moved," Joy said, "to Longues-sur-Mer."

"Long sea?"

"A town near the coast."

"The place will be swarming with Krauts," Fury said.

"All the more reason to get there before daybreak. This could be a long night again, but I swear we'll sleep in the morning."

Joy gritted her teeth against the nausea and pulled the motorcycle out onto the empty gravel road.

* * *

Historical Notes:

I read the procedures of a V2 launch before writing these scenes, but I'm not sure how right I got the fueling and launch process. The remote detonator of that power is purely fantasy.


	42. Fire and Ice

Chapter 42: Fire and Ice

* * *

Le Feu's sigh became a dramatic yawn, and she turned toward the window to watch the dark fields.

"You're allowed to sleep," Fury muttered.

"I am up now. I can't sleep once I am up."

Fury heard the rustle of fabric beside him as Le Feu shifted in her seat.

"I'm the same way," he said. It wasn't much to say, but it was conversation. After thirty minutes of silence, he was glad to know Le Feu was awake. "Used to serve me well when…" What did he want to tell her? About the NKVD? Prison?

"When I would…"

"You are more tired than you think," she laughed. Fear stirred in the back seat, and Fury looked back for a moment. Still asleep. Fear's tongue poked between his lips, moving with each breath.

Le Feu said, in an airy whisper, "I had to learn to live that way on the farm. An animal might take sick in the night, but I could not sleep again during the day. I learned to put off sleep."

"You did not grow up on the farm?" Fury asked.

Fear opened his eyes to a squint in time to see Le Feu's eyes, which were staring at Fury, dart away.

"What?" she said and then laughed. "Oh, no! Maman moved us there when I was small. She married a farmer after my father died."

_Lying whore,_ Fear thought. She made him sick, and he wasn't sure why. Her dark, strangely-shaped eyes, too perfect skin. Bile rose hot in his throat. There was Fury, just nodding, then smiling, then telling that woman that he had trained with the SS when Germany and Russian were not yet at war. Le Feu's finger was running down Fury's neck, from the back of his ear to his shoulder, and Fear realized he had opened his eyes all the way. Now he gripped her arm and was pulling it, bending it, so slender and fragile in his wiry fingers, and Fury had stopped the truck, and the motorcycle in front of them was a headlight coming back, and then, with a thud, everything went dark.

* * *

No disguises this time. They left their vehicles far from the site and walked the last mile. The pale sunlight had not yet reached this patch of woods, so they used their night vision, spoiled though it had been by the headlights. The End heard the men first, and then the other Cobras heard the shouts and clanking of metal above the din of cicadas. The bright glow of daylight ahead was the artificial lights the Germans had set up to make their work quicker.

The End's parrot landed on his shoulder in a flash of red.

"They have guards on the perimeter," the End whispered.

"Can you take care of them on your own?" Joy asked.

"I have to, don't I?"

"Unfortunately, yes." Joy glanced at Fear dangling luridly over Pain's shoulders. "You will cause a diversion, Pain, and Fury and Le Feu will take care of the… rockets."

The original intel was that there would be two rockets at each site, and here they were – one already on the back of its transport truck, and the other being lowered, now at a 70-degree angle to the ground. Twice as many men as they had killed by the other rockets loaded trucks and secured the first rocket with ropes.

Joy dropped into a crouch. "Quick change of plan," she said. "Let's take care of all the men first, then the rockets."

A metal door slammed in the clearing, and a rifle shot cracked ten feet from Joy's ear. She caught the End's smile as he disappeared into a bush dotted with tiny red flowers. The second perimeter guard fell. Le Feu watched, wide-eyed, both hands gripping her gun. They were not delicate hands like Sabine's. They were rough from years of handwork; a couple of thin burn scars stretched in the space between her thumb and forefinger. The nails were trimmed short and clean. She held the pistol confidently but wrong. Her left hand was wrapped tightly around the bottom of the grip as if she were strangling it.

Joy took her arm and pulled her to the ground as the Germans returned fire.

* * *

The first thing Fear noticed when he awoke was that an abnormally large hornet was resting on his chin. The second was a strange odor like a dank basement where someone was canning honey. The sound of gunfire came third, and by the time he heard it, Pain's massive hand was around his throat.

"Don't move, and you won't get stung," Pain said. He held out his finger for the hornet to walk onto it.

"Good…," Fear panted, "ad… vice."

The leather glove creaked as Pain pressed harder on Fear's windpipe.

"I mean it. Don't move."

Pain was crouched in the grass between two trucks, Fear draped over his broad back. He held the forefinger of his other hand to his lips and loosened his grip on Fear's throat. As Pain crawled under one of the trucks with his pistol drawn, several thousand hornets swarmed over Fear's body. Gently as a mother moves a sleeping child, they lifted him off of Pain's back and onto the ground, but they did not leave. Through the cloud of hornets, Fear saw Sorrow press himself against the launch platform forty feet away and close his eyes. A grenade exploding somewhere near the first rocket meant Fury was nearby. The End would be somewhere behind the tree line. Le Feu flung herself inexpertly under another truck, dodging gunfire from two sides. Joy was nowhere in the clearing. The least Fear could do was help. He reached for the loop on his belt where he kept his crossbow. Nothing. His hand moved to the right where his pistol was holstered. Empty holster.

"Pain!" he hissed. "Where the hell are my weapons?"

Pain glanced back at him and turned away again.

"Pain!" Fear lunged forward but was blocked suddenly by an impenetrable wall of hornets.

"Dammit, Pain! Where the hell's my crossbow?"

Then he saw the Joy to his right, her face gleaming with sweat as she rose from the grass, gun already raised. Her eyes were narrowed, and she smiled in a way that showed only her front teeth on the top. The first of her prey fell behind Fear, and the second was only a few feet from Sorrow, who shuddered so hard that he almost dropped his gun. Then Joy's gun jammed.

* * *

"Shit shit shit shit shit shit…," Joy's mind whispered fervently, but it was more of a Coney Island scream. For the first time since Los Alamos, she was fighting with her mind clear. No time to fix the Colt. She reached for a grenade. Two men had ducked behind the rocket that was already on the ground. Perfect target. Le Feu stumbled against the near side of the rocket, steadying herself on its trailer. Le Feu's eyes roamed the clearing and then locked onto the armored support vehicle. She looked to the sky for a moment, crouched, and ran.

Le Feu was closer, but Joy had a grenade. She threw it in front of Le Feu and sprinted to the tracks where Fear and Pain were hiding.

"Don't h –" she said, but the rest of her sentence was lost in the explosion. No time to talk. Joy found the door to the armored vehicle in the smoke and dust. She caught the first soldier's wrist and threw him into the second. She ducked as the third tried to grab her throat from behind and pulled him by the armpits over her back and into the console. The first man's gun was a Smith & Wesson revolver which she emptied into the three soldiers. Joy shoved the body off of the console. Complicated thing. No wonder it took so long to launch a V2.

Beside the console, something caught the little light that was in the vehicle. It was about the size and shape of a child's ball, polished aluminum with what seemed to be a large light bulb inside. A body fell against the metal steps – Le Feu. Joy flattened herself against the wall by the door.

Le Feu pulled it open, panting from her dash across the clearing. The popping of gunfire was suddenly louder. Le Feu reacted with only slight disgust to the bodies. She glanced around the inside of the vehicle and swept to the console where she knelt over the aluminum ball.

She turned as Joy slammed the door. Le Feu's heavy-lidded doe eyes filled with tears that could have been fake. One hand crawled slowly down her side to her pants pocket and patted it.

"I already have it." Joy turned the remote detonator over in her hands.

Le Feu made a quick swipe, but Joy pushed her away effortlessly. A dead man's rib cracked under her as she landed. She reached for her holster, and Joy fired. Le Feu screamed.

"It's only a graze," Joy said. "It will heal."

"I –" Le Feu gasped, "wasn't –"

"You know what will happen if I press this?"

Le Feu nodded, her teeth gritted in pain.

"Well, now that we have no distractions, we can talk like women."

* * *

Sorrow opened his eyes as life drained out of the last man downed by the End's tranquilizers.

"All done," Pain said with the air of a child finishing his arithmetic. He holstered his gun and looked into the early morning sky.

"Why the shaking, Sorrow?" Fury asked. "You had no problem killing that old man yesterday."

Sorrow stared at him with a deep frown for a moment before saying, "Pain, we should let him go. It will be easier to travel."

He waved his hand toward Fear who was bound and gagged by dark bands of that looked horribly like thousands of closely-knit hornets.

"But he might try for Le Feu again."

"Le Feu will not be with us," Sorrow said flatly.

Fury turned sharply, his face white and his eyes twitching.

"I mean that she and Joy are staying."

"And what the hell does that mean?"

The End raised a warning hand. "Calm, Fury."

"Where the hell are they, Sorrow?" Fury snarled.

"Here," Sorrow said in what was almost a squeak. "But Joy does not want us to stay. We must go. Pain?"

"Fine," Pain sighed, and Fear's bonds fell into a swarm with the wave of one giant hand.

"I think a couple of your bees stung me," Fear said, rubbing a welt on the back of his neck.

"Hornets," Pain grunted.

"Serves you right, you slimy fuck," Fury said.

"Just – just…," Sorrow said, and then his voice became loud, confident. "Just finish with the explosives, Fury, and we will leave."

* * *

Le Feu's bottom lip jutted, and her pupils were wide in the darkness.

"Your men are still here," Le Feu said. "You wouldn't kill them all for this little… whim?"

"I would… if it prevented you from making any more deals with the Nazis." Joy ran her finger around the edge of the detonator switch.

"Please, La Joie! It's not worth the sacrifice! I assure you."

"What was it worth to you? How many thousands of marks?"

"La Joie!"

"I wonder what it feels like, to die in an explosion. Will it be quick? Or will the pieces –"

"Safety, La Joie!" Le Feu sobbed. "They promised me safety."

She threw herself face-first at Joy's feet, and Joy stomped on the hand that reached for her ankle.

"So you somehow _had_ this… blitzkugel, and you sold it to the Nazis for safety?" Joy ground her heel harder into the bones of Le Feu's hand.

"I – I'm Jewish!" Le Feu gasped.

"No, you aren't." Several bones snapped like popcorn. Le Feu wrapped her other hand feebly around Joy's boot, but Joy pried it off roughly and twisted it behind Le Feu's head. "You are half-Chinese."

Le Feu laughed, wincing with each burst. "Did your psychic tell you this?"

She screamed as Joy twisted her injured shoulder. The sound filled the armored vehicle, resonated between the metal walls.

"You trust what _he_ says?" Le Feu groaned in French. English was apparently too difficult in that much pain. "You want to believe that much? Who did you lose? Someone you loved? They… they prey on that!"

"What is your real name, Le Feu?"

"I went to one once. I know the faces, the trances… but I knew the woman was not my maman."

"Was your mother Chinese? You'll answer soon. You haven't been trained like the Cobras."

"They learn things by watching, listening. It's not magic – aaaaargh!" Le Feu gasped, and a low moan gugled in her throat. "Lisette – Lisette Chen. My father was Chinese."

Joy lifted her foot but grasped Le Feu's uninjured hand tightly. "The blitzkugel?"

"Something… something I stole," Le Feu said. "With – with La Glace."

"Half-brother?"

Le Feu lifted her eyes sharply.

Joy laughed. "The Sorrow told me none of this. So you stole the detonator too?"

"But not the explosive. That was my own work." Joy sensed a hint of pride in her voice. "Not everything was stolen. I helped develop it all."

"In China."

"After Maman died. La Glace – Dadang – came to me, told me who he was. The war had not yet come to Europe. It was China, Japan…"

"And the blitzkugel?"

Le Feu's eyes flitted to the aluminum ball in the corner. "If you haven't figured that one out," Le Feu said, "you don't –"

The movement was sudden but graceless, something of a lurch. It worked. Le Feu wrenched her hand from Joy's grasp and pulled herself against the door so that she could turn onto her back.

"– deserve to know!" she shouted, ramming her knee into Joy's abdomen.

* * *

The End hunched over the German radio equipment in the back of a canvas-sided truck. "I think I can use this one."

"You think?" Fury asked. "Can't Sorrow just – what do you call that?"

"Channeling?" Pain offered.

"Yeah, channel the guy!"

"It is not so simple…," Sorrow said.

"You love that goddamned phrase!"

The End said, "Sorrow, if you please, tell me what to say in code."

Sorrow had spent the past few minutes writing their coded message – that they had been attacked, only the radio operator had escaped to send this last message as he died, and the saboteurs seemed to be headed to Point-du-Hoc. He and the other Cobras had parked the van in a field over a mile from the rockets.

"Hurry it along a little," Fear's voice called from outside. "This doesn't seem like a safe place."

"Of course it's not safe," Pain said. "We're Russians, a Canadian, and a Gypsy in the middle of Nazi-occupied France."

"Fury!" Fear yelled. "If I weren't standing guard, I'd come in there and… skewer you! Think it's really funny, don't you?"

"What?" Pain said.

"Not one goddamn bit. I have to guard my pockets now," Fury said.

"You f –"

"That should get them off our trail for a whie, " the End said, standing so fast that his parrot took wing.

Sorrow tossed his head as if waking from the first stage of sleep. "We will be off, then," he said in a small, strained voice.

He climbed out of the truck, seemed to trip, and toppled into the grass.

"Oh, no," Fear muttered, landing beside him.

Sorrow lay face-down, his arms trapped awkwardly under his body.

"Get the fuck down, Fear!" Fury shouted. "You'll get hit too."

Fear turned Sorrow over. A dark stain of blood shimmered on the brown coveralls just above his heart. "He wasn't shot. He's probably been bleeding since yesterday."

* * *

Tears stung the corners of Joy's eyes, and stars exploded across them. The pain continued in waves after the initial blow. She took Le Feu by the chin and slammed her head against the metal door. The woman's eyes rolled, and she leaned forward. Joy caught both arms as Le Feu coughed phlegmy vomit. The urge to do the same burned at the back of Joy's mouth. A monster writhed in her stomach, devouring her organs. The room swam in the sickening smell of vomit and drying blood. She opened the door with one hand and dragged Le Feu down the steps. Fresh air. She gulped it like cool water in the desert. The detonator lay just inside the doorway. Joy reached back for it, and Le Feu tore free. Joy leaned against the door, slamming it on Le Feu's broken hand. There was no beauty left in her pale face. Le Feu's dark, sensual lips were contorted in grotesque horror. Her eyes bulged, bloodshot and glossy with tears. Black curls clung to her cheeks and nose like garter snakes crawling on her skin.

Joy pulled the door open, and Le Feu fell. She had no more pity for Le Feu. A bullet would be merciful. Joy swept the detonator into her hand, making no effort to avoid treading on Le Feu's hands in the process. The child was still moving, convulsing every few seconds. Death throes, a seizure, a protest? Joy did not care. Le Feu had caused it.

She breathed through her teeth for another minute, watching Le Feu cry over the mess that used to be her right hand.

_Be rational,_ Joy told herself. _You could kill her right here._

Prisoners were dangerous. Yet she was to die understanding Sorrow's powers. Would she answer questions about the blitzkugel in the afterlife?

Joy smiled and hoped it looked genuine. "Let's catch up with the others."

* * *

The thick black stitches had torn the gash open further, and blood poured over them in frothy spurts.

"At least we know his heart's beating," Fear said with an uneasy half-grin.

"Styptic?" the End asked, his hand out. Pain fished the vial from his bag. The End used all of it.

"We can re-wrap it," the End said thoughtfully.

"And you know what else you can do, old man?" Fury growled. "You can read him his Last Rites."

"Won't do any good if he can't hear them," Fear said, snapping his fingers by Sorrow's ear. "How much blood you reckon he's lost?"

"Fury's right, old man," Pain said, pulling his balaclava off and holding it in his hands like a hat. "Sorrow's dying. He's pale as a ghost."  
"He's always pale as a ghost," Fear said.

Fury said nothing. His eyes flicked between the wound, still bleeding through the styptic, and Sorrow's closed eyes. After a moment, he dropped his pack on the ground, hoisted Sorrow onto his shoulders, and said, "I'm not going to fucking sit here and watch him die. I'll find a goddamn doctor in town."

"Not in that uniform," the End said. "We'll all have to change."

* * *

The truck stood like a watchful shepherd in the field near the road. Joy approached it warily. Empty. No code left behind by the Cobras. Blood smeared the blades of grass outside. A tiny bit of white powder had caught in a dandelion – styptic. Someone had been wounded. The trail of trampled wild flowers and feral wheat in the vacant field was too obvious. She had trained them better than that. They had followed the main road for a quarter mile, and then the trail went off the right side into the trees.

Le Feu was silent until after the explosion. Then she spoke in a soft, timid voice, apologizing to Joy and asking if there was anything she could do.

"There is," Joy said. "Carry this for a while."

Struggling with two packs, Le Feu sighed and grunted, but Joy had no sympathy. She smiled when Le Feu tripped over a root and crashed into a tree.

Joy found the other Cobras' packs hidden in some thorny bushes. She opened two and found, in the second, two brown mechanic's jumpsuits, the smaller stained with blood. When she noticed Le Feu staring over her shoulder, she shoved the suit quickly back into the bag and re-hid them a little better than the End had.

"One of your men is hurt," Le Feu said in that tiny voice. "Your husband?"

"We're not married," Joy said.

"The father of…" She looked at Joy and stopped.

The child had not moved since they left the rockets, but the nausea was still there.

"We should rest, La Joie," Le Feu said.

"We have to find my unit."

"And what? Go another night without sleep?" She dropped the packs beside the bushes. "I'm sleeping here… if – if that's okay."

Joy suddenly noticed how her legs felt like they were dragging cinder blocks. When she sat, her nausea subsided.

"We can sleep here," she said.

* * *

The café was suitably seedy. A card game in the corner looked suspiciously like some sort of mission briefing. The man ordering at the bar had his face hidden beneath a large hood. Pain drew glances for only a moment when he walked in without his balaclava.

"Draft beer," Pain said, and the barman looked at him sideways. "Hmmm… whatever you've got."

The barman did not move. "Funny accent."

"Yeah, I'm Canadian."

Both the barman and the hooded man laughed.

"What're you here for?" the barman asked.

"Need a doctor, one who doesn't ask questions."

"That'll be Felix DeMille down on Rue de la Mer."

"Thanks, sir." Pain stood to leave.

"Eh, uh, Monsieur Canadian, you forgot to pay for your, uh, draft beer."

Pain dropped a pile of Reichsmarks on the bar.

"We don't take that rubbish here," the barman said.

Pain pulled Fear's pistol out of the waistband of his pants and laid it on the money.

"That's better," the barman said.

* * *

"You're sure this is it?" Fear asked, staring at the small painted sign by the road that read simply "DeMille".

"Only DeMille on the street," Pain said.

"You ever get the feeling you're in a very small world?" Fear said.

"All the goddamn time," Fury said. "There've got to be thousands of DeMilles. Can we get going? He's heavy."

Pain knocked at the door, and a young man answered. He trembled in Pain's massive shadow as he said, "Not – not open yet, monsieur."

"Please, young man. Our friend is dying."

The young man stared up at Pain, mouth agape, until a female voice behind him said, "Let them in."

She slipped into an office as Pain ducked through the doorway.

"I – I'll get Dr. DeMille," the young man said.

The female voice called, "Just take him to that room on the right. The doctor will be with him in a moment."

Fury laid Sorrow on the white linens of a hospital bed that sat in the middle of what had been a bedroom. The gold-and-white wallpaper printed with gaudy vases was not entirely gone.

"Shame he'll mess up the nice sheets," Pain said.

"He's still breathing," Fury said, touching Sorrow's lips. "I think."

Shoes scuffled across the carpet in the hallway.

"Well," said the female voice as it approached the room. "My father is out today. I am Dr. DeMille… Junior."

Leaning in the doorway with her lips pursed in an arrogant smile was Sabine DeMille.

* * *

Historical Notes:

The Second Sino-Japanese War started in 1937. The war eventually became one of the conflicts of World War II.

Maman is a French word that translates roughly to "Mother" with a capital "M".


	43. The Deal

Chapter 43: The Deal

* * *

*Author note: I have never put an author note on one of my Joy of Battle chapters. In fact, I make it a standard practice NOT to use author notes, but this time, I believe that I owe you all an apology. I went over a month without an update. This was for many reasons (most of them good things in my life), but I still want to say that I'm sorry for the wait. You WILL get Chapter 44 in the next week or so, and I hope Chapter 45 comes quickly after that. As always, please enjoy the story, and leave feedback. Knowing that people are reading it and responding to the characters as I've portrayed them helps me to keep writing. Thanks!

I'll be deleting this note once I put up Chapter 45.

* * *

"So…," Sabine said, her voice oozing like poisoned honey, "your little assassin went and got himself hurt."

She raised a hand to her chin but did not leave the doorway.

"Soooo…," she said as if scolding a small child, "you come to me for help."

Her laugh was like a toddler banging on a piano. It died quickly.

"We don't even want you to lay a fucking finger on him!" Fury shouted, staring at Sabine fiercely.

"Yes, Fury, I'm afraid we do," the End said calmly. "Dr. DeMille, we are willing to pay."

"It's funny," purred Sabine, stepping into the room, "that I finally find you, and you're missing the one person I needed to talk to."

She paced in front of the bed; her right knee buckled with every step. "Where is the Joy?"

"Don't fucking know. Don't fucking care. Can we find a real doctor?" Fury said.

"Please, Miss DeMille," said Pain, "Sorrow is the only one she told."

"Isn't that… special," Sabine said, leaning over Sorrow's motionless body. "If I killed him right here, it would end a lot of our trouble. Fritz?"

She snapped her head toward Fear who was examining a small lamp beside the bed with his eyes down.

"Good work," Sabine said.

"What the hell?" Fury shouted, rounding on Fear. "What did you do, you stinking piece of –"

"That's enough!" Sabine cried. "He brought you to me. I have orders to get you out of France immediately."

"Well, we have orders to stay, and you're sure as hell not going to make us leave."

"You can go quietly, or you can go in handcuffs. Makes no difference to me."

Fury swung at Sabine, and she stepped aside deftly. A hulking man with a deep tan and dark mustache stomped into the room and caught Fury's fist.

Sabine laughed. "You really thought I would have you lot here with no one but my little cousin to protect me?"

Fury gritted his teeth and kicked the man hard in the knee. The man stumbled backward, giving Fury a moment to wrap an arm around his neck and jam a gun into his side. Breathing heavily, Fury looked up at Sabine in time to see her entwine her fingers in Fear's matted hair and draw her gun to his spine. In a fluid movement, she shoved Fear against the bed and bent him over Sorrow until his throat was above Sorrow's heart.

"Sabine…," Fear said with a slight tremble.

He tried to lift his head, but she pressed the gun harder against his spine. Through the curtain of hair that had fallen over his face, he could see half of Fury. The one horrified eye and half of a gaping mouth that Fear could see were enough to indicate that Fury had no plan. The other Cobras were somewhere to the left, by the door. Fear heard heavy footfalls stop at the doorway and the End grunt.

"I can't believe you, Fear," Fury said. His eye flashed.

"I really…," whispered Fear. "I really didn't."

The gun pushed harder still, and Fear's lips met the blood-soaked fabric of Sorrow's shirt. Sorrow's body was so cold; was Fear imagining the slight rise and fall of his chest?

"Woman, you are mad," said Pain's deep voice. "You shoot him, and this place gets blown to Kingdom Come."

"Don't think I don't know that!" Sabine cried, but she lifted the gun a bit off of Fear's neck.

The slight tremble of her hand traveled down the gun, brushed the hair at the back of his neck. Fear. It surged through his body like electricity until it was tingling in his fingertips. Fear flicked his tongue. Sabine had had her fun.

With the squelch of a boot pulling out of the mud, Fear swung his left arm backward farther and faster than a normal man. He found the grip by instinct. Sabine carried a Walther. Nice. Her finger was off the trigger. Good girl. He lifted her hands with the flat of his, tilting the pistol up so that it pointed at Fury, then the ceiling. He curled a leg around her injured knee and jerked it forward. From the doorway, he heard a rifle clattering to the floor and a body following it with a meaty thud.

Sabine toppled into Sorrow's bed. Fear used the motion of her fall to slide the gun from her hands. She screamed in what Fear thought was frustration until she raised her head, and he saw the ragged hole a loose nail had torn through her cheek.

Her mouth gaped and twisted in pain. Even with blood dripping down her cheek, it suited her better than her earlier haughtiness. Fear desired nothing but to fall to his knees in front of her and lick the blood from her cheek, to pull that flower-printed dress from her shoulders before the blood could drip onto it.

"Fritz!" she cried in a horrified whisper. "I was never really going to shoot. You know that!"

"Of course you wouldn't shoot your goddamn _partner_!" Fury shouted.

"Come, Miss DeMille, Fury," said the End, "let's be reasonable. Our friend's life is a little closer to ending every moment we argue. Fear?"

"Huh?" His hungry eyes stayed on Sabine.

"You did not lead us here, correct?"

"No. How do you –"

"Shh. That's all you need to say. Miss DeMille?"

She looked up with narrowed eyes.

"What do you require in exchange for helping the Sorrow?"

"Tell the Fear to shoot me. I won't help a bloody Communist."

"Hell, if you won't, I'll do it," Fury said.

"Fury, stay quiet. Miss DeMille, if you are a real doctor, you are the only one who can help."

Sabine touched her cheek, winced, and spat a mouthful of blood onto the hardwood floor. "He needs a transfusion. It's easy enough to sew him up properly." She paused to wince again. "You say you'll give me anything?"

"Yes," the End said. "Within reason."

"The Joy, then."

"That's not –"

"Shh, Pain," the End said. "That is understandable, Miss DeMille, but after the mission."

She pursed her lips, red and slick with her own blood. "There is a German airstrip hidden five miles southwest of Point-du-Hoc. I have a contact in the SS, not exactly a double agent but he gets… benefits from helping me with small stuff. He'll have a British plane ready to take her to a hospital in Wales. It should be more secure than the one in Albuquerque."

Sabine turned from the End to Fear with a conspiratorial smirk.

"No," Fury muttered. "Hell, no! Why are we still here? We need a doctor, not this lunatic!"

"She'll be kept safe?" asked Pain, stepping over the bodyguard he had knocked unconscious.

"Yes," Sabine said, "she and the baby. David and I spoke with the America Philosophers. They agreed to let the V2 mission be her last for a while."

"How the hell did you know about the mission?" Fury asked.

"She's David Oh's sister," Fear said. He still held Sabine's pistol, aimed at her face more out of habit than the intent to kill her if she moved.

"Oh," said Fury. "Explains a lot."

"The Joy, then?" Sabine said, looking at each of the Cobras. "Once her child is delivered, she will be free to return to you, that is… if she so chooses."

"You won't make the boss do anything," Fury said.

"Of course not! You will. That's the deal. You bring her to me at the airstrip. I take her to Wales."

"Shit. We can't do that!"

"Sabine is on our side, Fury," Fear said. "We work for the Philosophers, remember?"

"Thank you, Fritz."

"Fuck the Philosophers!" Fury slammed his pistol sharply into the other bodyguard's skull, and the man slumped to the floor. He stomped a boot down on the man's back and lowered his pistol, finger on the trigger, to the man's head.

"If you don't bring the Joy to Point-du-Hoc," Sabine said, using the edge of the bed to lift herself, "it may very well turn out that three of the Cobras are part of a conspiracy to undermine the war effort. Quite likely, they will find that the Philosophers have plenty of evidence to convict them and that, in fact, the Philosophers are not bound by the usual laws of the British Isles and that they never abolished the practice of drawing and –"

"Please, Sabine," the End's said quietly, "there is no need for threats. We will bring the Joy to you."

"You all agree?"

"It seems that may be for the best," Pain said.

Fear nodded, watching Sorrow in silence.

Fury sighed. "You'll help him, then?"

"Yes, but you will tell the Sorrow nothing of this arrangement. I cannot have him in the way again."

* * *

Joy had offered to take the first watched, but Le Feu was desperate for redemption after what she called her "behavior in the clearing". Le Feu had propped herself against a tree with a view to the edge of the woods, rifle across her knees. Joy stretched out on her side, hidden under a bush full of summer leaves.

For five minutes, the only sound between them was the periodic rustling of leaves in the wind.

"La Joie," Le Feu whispered finally, "will we help your husband?"

Joy considered ignoring the question, pretending she was already asleep. She closed her eyes before Le Feu could turn to her and immediately felt fatigue dragging her into dark, refreshing sleep. She opened her eyes and answered, "I already said that he is not my husband."

Speaking French took enough thought to keep her awake.

"Oh!" Le Feu said. Joy could not see her mouth but knew it had formed into a startled little "o" that remained even after the sound had left it. "I am sorry for… Is he alright?"

"I don't know." Talking about Sorrow would not help her rest.

"Do you think –?"

"No."

Le Feu was silent. After a few minutes, she leaned her head to one side and breathed deeply, evenly. She was asleep. The sunlight fell in lines across her face, which had not been burnt ruddy over the past day as Joy's had. Her black eyebrows looked as though they had been painted onto her pale face with two strokes of a calligraphy brush. Her nose widened at the end, forming a shape almost like the arrowheads Joy had found in her backyard near Wright Field. Joy wondered when exactly she had realized Le Feu was half-Chinese and when she had finally recognized that Le Feu was the chubby little daughter of Shihong Chen, that girl called Lili who was teased for her flat nose and squirrelly cheeks.

Joy's pain and nausea had dulled, leaving, once again, a small shred of pitty for Le Feu. The Chinese Philosophers had likely used her to further their own interests in Europe. Le Feu's mangled hands lay cradled between her thighs, one holding the rifle weakly. There were bandages in bag Joy was using as a pillow. She pressed her palms into the soft earth and tried to push herself up. Her body collapsed from the exertion, leaving her panting facedown in the brush. The child inside her gave a single kick. Joy rolled onto her side and closed her eyes from the pain. In the next breath, she was asleep.

* * *

"I'm AB, eh?" the End said with a superior grin, "pretty rare, I heard. No wonder they never had a problem giving me a transfusion."

Sabine was not smiling. "Dammit. The closest is yours, Pain. You're at least an A. There's about a fifty-fifty chance he'll take the blood."

"That's it?" Fury asked.

"We can try it and maybe kill him or do nothing and definitely kill him."

Pain rolled up a sleeve. "Take what you will."

* * *

Historical Notes:

Rh blood types had been discovered by World War II, but the positive and negative that we all know so well today had not yet come to major prominence. For the purposes of drama, I made them a little more well-known.


	44. The Coming Storm

Chapter 44: The Coming Storm

* * *

Vines grew thick over the arms of the antique chair. Their thorns had shredded the blue satin armrests. Joy watered the lilies growing up through the seat cushion with a little can gleaming silver in the sun. Something rustled above her, and she looked up to see a blue jay flash between the trees overhead. The jay turned in the air and fluttered down to the chair. It lifted its black eyes and distinctly said, "La Joie?"

It had a woman's voice, but the bird was male.

"La Joie," it said again.

The watering can dropped from her hand, spilling light rather than water over her feet. That chair belonged in the parlor of her father's house which had… She saw the house suddenly as a mess of charred beams. Could this chair have survived?

"La Joie!"

Her eyes were open instantly. Le Feu stared down at her, slightly startled at how quickly Joy had awakened.

"La – La Joie! I was wondering where you have bandages or splints or – my hands were hurting from… sitting too long."

"Yes," Joy said. She rummaged through her bag absently, forgetting that the bandages were in the front pocket. She had given in to sleep, to weakness, and left Le Feu in a position to kill her if she had wanted. Worse, they had both been sleeping. The Germans, police, anyone could have found them. The sun was already descending. It was maybe two in the afternoon, and the other Cobras had not yet returned. If Sorrow had lost that much blood, they may have gone to a doctor. The French didn't have blood banks like the Soviets and Americans. One of the Cobras would have to be a donor. Sorrow was A-negative, and Pain was what? A-positive? And Fury? He was absolutely a B.

"Have you found the bandages yet?" Le Feu asked.

"What's your blood type?"

"O. Why?"  
"Positive or negative?"

"What?"

"I'm O-positive."

"I – I haven't the slightest idea."

Joy grasped her by the wrist and stood, dragging Le Feu to her feet.

"Ow. Ouch! La Joie, careful where you – yeow!"

Le Feu stumbled behind Joy. "Where are we going?"

"Into town."

"In the middle of the day? Are you mad?"

"I'm a Cobra, so… quite possibly." She looked back at Le Feu without the hint of a smile.

* * *

"Henri!" Sabine shouted. "Where does father keep the equipment for a blood transfusion?"

Every drawer in Sorrow's room was open, the contents in disarray from Sabine's search. Her unconscious bodyguards were now sleeping in the room across the hall, and her cousin Henri had vanished.

"Henri, please!" Sabine cried. "I've got a patient dying here."

A tiny whimper issued from a door barely wide enough for a couple of brooms to fit behind it. Sabine opened it with a savage grin, and her cousin tumbled into the hallway, sandy hair full of cobwebs and a dark stain on his pants. He screamed.

"Where's the equipment?" Sabine asked.

Henri toddled awkwardly to a cabinet down the hall, trying with little success to hide his pants. He looked so pathetic that even Fear could not snicker. Sabine brought a crate to Sorrow's bedside and dropped it on the table.

"Thank you, Henri," she said. "Now go home and change."

"What's that monstrosity?" Fury asked as Sabine lifted a three-chambered glass pump from the box.

"We don't have the newest equipment here." Fear saw a tinge of pink in her cheeks.

* * *

"'DeMille'," Joy read. "Funny."

"How?" Le Feu asked.

They had walked into town without getting too many stares. With Joy's pregnancy and Le Feu's bandaged hands, they seemed perfectly in place going to a doctor, even if they were strangers.

"Just someone I knew once. Same name."

The name seemed familiar, as if she had heard it uttered in passing a few times, perhaps under the breath of her father or David.

"You knock," Joy said, and Le Feu nodded, eager to keep Joy on her side.

The trimmed bushes in front of the clinic showed the white undersides of their leaves in the growing wind of a coming storm. Le Feu knocked at the door while Joy glanced swiftly into the two front windows. Tiny waiting area. Neat little desk. The room was empty.

No one came to the door. Joy rounded the corner of the low brick house and heard Le Feu running to catch her.

"Wait at the door!" Joy hissed.

"I want to come with you."

Joy shook her head angrily and waved Le Feu away. She heard voices inside that grew louder as she crept closer to the back wall. Then the front door opened, and Le Feu cried out in French. Joy continued around the building even after the front door had closed.

"Who is this?" she heard a woman's voice say sharply from the open window ahead.

"Le Feu," answered Fear's voice. "She was with the boss."

"Le Feu?" said the woman. "I've heard of you. You make bombs for the Resistance in Matthieu, correct?"

Le Feu did not answer.

The other woman laughed, high and punctuated. Joy remembered that laugh, the way it had awakened her in the hospital and torn through her thoughts like fingernails. It was Dr. LaSalle's laugh.

"So, where is the Joy?" Dr. LaSalle asked.

_Please don't answer her,_ Joy thought.

After a long pause, Le Feu said, "We were separated at some point."

"The hell you mean by that?" Fury growled.

"She is alive, though?" Pain asked.

"Yes. Last I saw her." Le Feu gasped. "Her husband! He is dead!"

Le Feu's words dropped like ice in Joy's throat.

Dr. LaSalle laughed again. "Silly girl! Of course he's not dead. I wouldn't be about to give a transfusion to a dead man."

"Blood transfusion?"

"Yes. Sorrow's A-negative. Pain is A-positive. There's half a chance Sorrow's still a dead man."

"I'm an O."

"Positive or negative? O-negatives are pretty rare."

"I don't know, but can you find out?"

_Without any prompting,_ Joy thought with a smile.

Something glass was set down with a thud. "Not sure why I should do anything until I know where Joy is," Dr. LaSalle said.

"Pretty damned irresponsible, leaving a window open," Joy said, climbing into the frame. "I could have been a Nazi, a gendarme, the town gossip." She dropped to the floor beside Sorrow's bed and tried not to look at his ashen face and the dark row of fresh stitches on his chest.

* * *

By evening, Sabine had finished her work, even with Joy glaring over her shoulder the entire time. Sorrow was breathing normally, and Le Feu lay with her head on Fury's lap in a corner, splints on her broken fingers. Joy stood at the window, seeing time in her mind as a series of V2 rockets on trailers being moved from Le Molay-Littry.

"Joy," the woman she now knew as Sabine said, "I should take a look at you, for the baby's sake."

Joy saw Sabine's hand hovering toward her shoulder and stepped to the side. "I won't have you touching my body again."

Sabine did not react. "You should at least sleep. Le Feu says you've been awake for two days."

"I slept today."

"Not long enough. I have a bed in –"

"Keep it."

The End leaned against the wall by the window, eavesdropping. "You really ought to have a rest. Nothing better to do until Sorrow's up again."

* * *

Joy awoke after only four hours in the hard, institutional bed. One of Sabine's bodyguards stood outside the room with his arms crossed. He grunted and let Joy pass. Pain's deep, resonant laugh boomed from Sorrow's room. Sorrow was awake; he smiled when Joy walked into the room.

"Just be glad," Pain said between guffaws, "that it's a beautiful woman inside you and not… me!"

"Ready to get up?" Joy asked.

"Right down to business, boss!" Pain said. "Guess you'll be needing some privacy."

He rose to his full height, almost touching the ceiling.

"That is _not _what I meant, Pain!"

When Pain was gone, Joy laid her hands on the sheets near Sorrow's hand. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"I said on the plane that you would be fine and –"

"And you cannot predict the future. You cannot plan for everything."

"If you're ready, we should leave before Sabine wakes up."

* * *

The storm clouds were clearing, leaving a chilly mist over the fields. Tall wooden poles loomed like dead, branchless trees – Rommelspargel to ensnare landing gliders. To their north, hidden by darkness, was the German battery. The Allies were likely to bomb it before the invasion, and the Cobras would not have enough explosives for the rockets if they destroyed the guns. She looked toward Le Molay-Littry thirteen miles south as if she could see the rockets from where she stood.

A man's voice sounded somewhere in the mist, talking casually, not shouting. She dropped to the ground, and the Cobras followed. Le Feu crouched a moment later. Joy glanced at the End who squinted at his parrot and then made a motion to indicate that there were Germans on all sides.

_How?_ Joy mouthed.

The End shrugged.

She knew how. After getting the bags the other Cobras had left in the woods, they had gone west across the fields to save time. No trees to hide them. Nowhere for Fear to climb. The earth trembled under her feet. She had walked them right into the middle of a panzer division.

* * *

Historical Notes

As I said in the notes for the last chapter, Rh boodtypes were not fully understood during World War II. I gave Sabine more of an understanding than an average doctor would have had for dramatic purposes.

Rommelspargel, or "Rommel's Asparagus", were long poles erected in open areas (such as fields or beaches) to catch paratroopers and gliders. They were mainly near the coast of France as part of the Atlantic Wall, the defenses the Nazis built and maintained against the Allied troops that might invade from the ocean.


	45. The Liability

Author Note: I said I'd never do one of these again. I lied. Now I know that my story has been long and winding and not altogether as good as it could have been. I apologize for that. Someday, I may go back and rewrite it into something that has a real story arc. If you know the story of how this was written, you'll understand why the pacing is so strange. I won't talk about that now.

I will, however, apologize for my lack of updates the past two months. A big reason for that was coming to terms with the fact that my story arc is more like a silly TV show (i.e. Lost) than a novel and trying to decide whether to write the whole thing now or continue in the same direction until it's done. I've decided to continue. I'm finishing this, come hell or high water, so don't worry about having another unfinished story lying about on this site. Thank you for your patience.

* * *

Chapter 46: The Liability

* * *

The wheat shivered over Joy's head, catching a cold, humid breeze from the ocean. Sorrow gazed at her behind a curtain of gray stalks, waiting for her orders. She nodded, and he closed his eyes. Joy counted – one… two… the tanks rumbled closer, still invisible in the mist. Three… four… a hand touched Joy's shoulder – Le Feu, her elbows muddy from crawling. At least the brown would camouflage her pale skin.

"What is –" Le Feu said, but Joy reached a hand back to cover her mouth.

Sorrow's eyes were still closed, and Joy finally saw, only a few yards away, the dark outline of a German soldier against the fog. Sorrow opened his eyes wide and shook his head.

_No spirits,_ he mouthed.

The German's outline solidified as he emerged from the fog, and behind him, the hulking shape of a tank. The noise of the tanks would only be loud enough to cover a suppressed shot, and he was too far away for her pistol. Joy held up a hand to indicate that the Cobras should stay put and dragged herself through the mud toward the murky shapes. Her body felt heavy and cumbersome, and the mud soaked through her fatigues. Voices echoed around her, words drowning in the sound of the moving tanks. The soldier's face was now distinct, with sunken cheeks and a prominent nose. His eyes were set obstinately north along the path of the tank ahead of him. With two shots that even Joy could barely hear, the soldier was dead.

Two more men crossed between Joy and the Cobras, talking loudly and nonchalantly. Neither saw Joy nor the body of their comrade lying in the high grass only twenty feet away.

Sorrow nodded to Joy as soon as he could see her again and, with a grim sort of shudder, crawled southeast. The Cobras cut across the field in tight formation, rustling the tall wheat like one massive anaconda. Soldiers passed on all sides, and Sorrow led them slowly, pausing after every move forward to close his eyes and draw a shaky breath. A rim of gold lit the horizon after another hour and grew, turning the dense fog first into mist and then into cold dew. The final tank passed, sinking deep into the tracks of another. Sorrow halted and flattened his body. Le Feu gave a tiny gasp beside Joy, and Joy's eyes snapped to Le Feu who gazed pleadingly back.

"You find it yet, mate?" Joy heard a voice say closeby.

Then she saw what Sorrow and Le Feu had already seen. A helmet-clad head has just risen over the grass, and the wide body it belonged go resembled an olive drab boulder wearing boots.

The soldier stood, his boots only three feet from Sorrow's head. "Aw, come on. I'm not going to kill my knees for a couple cigarettes."  
A second soldier crouching near Le Feu answered. "It's not just the cigarettes. The case was gold-plated."

"You sure you checked all your pockets?" the first soldier asked.

"Yes."

"All of them?"

"Damn you, yes, I…" He patted the back pocket of his pants and frowned.

The pants were wide at the top, tight below the knee – jodhpurs. Under a German rain slicker, he was wearing the uniform of a Red Army infantryman.

"What did I tell you?" the first soldier said, slapping his comrade's shoulder. He spoke German with a slight timidity, as though translating some of the words from another language. _Defectors, perhaps?_ Joy thought.

The second solder pulled a cigarette from his newly-found case and reached into another pocket for a match.

"Light it on the way. Sun's up now, and we should have hit the beach by dawn." The first soldier took a step closer to Le Feu, turned back to the other soldier and then, in sudden comprehension, spun around again, reaching with one hand for his holstered pistol.

Le Feu was closest. Both of her bandaged hands wrapped around the soldier's ankle and pulled. He lost his balance in the middle of the turn and flung open his arms to break his fall. Fear emerged from the grass, scuttling like an enormous spider. He shot a hungry look at the solder and then at Joy, who nodded. Pain and Fury dragged the other soldier to the ground, and his gun fired into the air with a crack that masked the sound of Fear snapping the first soldier's neck.

Le Feu swore. "Someone must have heard that."

"That's why we run now," Joy said, springing to her feet as gracefully as her body would allow.

* * *

The chateau, a grand stone house on a low hill beside the village of Le Molay-Littry, had been caged in a high barbed wire fence which cut like a moat through the lawn.

"Still such a lovely house," Le Feu whispered breathlessly. "I only wish the Nazis had not put that awful fence there. It was built in the seventeenth –"

"We don't need a damn tour guide," Fury said.

From their vantage in a stand of ornamental bushes that had not been trimmed since the German invasion, Joy watched a delivery truck stop at the gate. A German soldier scanned the piece of paper the driver offered through the window and shook his head. The driver flung the door open, just missing the soldier, and rushed to the gate, banging both hands against it. Another soldier joined the first in prying the driver away from the gate, their shouts coming to Joy's ears as the barking of dogs.

Something rustled high in the trees behind her.

"There's a bunker 'round the back," Joy heard suddenly hissed into one ear.

"How many men?" she asked.

"None I could see," said Fear, "but you know that means nothing."

"Nothing at all."

"Big, open lawn," Fear said in disgust.

Joy turned her binoculars on the expanse of grass stretching from the bushes to the house. "Probably mined."

"It is," Sorrow whispered.

Joy looked down at Sorrow stooped at her feet and grinned. "Just like the Tatinskaya, then?"

"No," Sorrow said bluntly. "That was different. Everyone was dying there, and they remembered what they had done before."

"I can do it," Pain said with the glee of a child about to get a cookie. "My hornets form a sort of snake shape and make a path through the grass. Their combined pressure will set off any mines. Granted, I may lose a few, but…"

Joy waited for him to finish, lips pursed and eyebrows raised. Even through his balaclava, she could see he was grinning toothily at her. "That's the most ludicrous plan I've ever heard. They'd hear one going off and know someone was on the lawn. We'll just have to take it slow, maybe wait until dusk. At least we'll see if they take any of the rockets out if we wait." She glanced again at Sorrow who was plucking a loose thread on his jacket. "They haven't already moved them, right?"

"_Merde,_ La Joie!" Le Feu cried a little louder than Joy thought safe. "You waited this long to ask?"

"Thought you didn't think he was worth anything?" Pain asked, and Le Feu sniffed.

"Sorrow," Joy said, "are the rockets here?"

"Yes!" he said in a quiet, startled voice. Then he sighed and lifted his pale eyes like two oddly blue light bulbs. "Yes, they are here."

Fear's mouth opened, but his words were drowned in the roar of an explosion.

"Holy fuck," Fury whispered. "Didn't even kill one of them. Waste of a good fucking explosive."

The two German guards approached what had been the delivery truck while another two sprinted across the lawn. The gate lay in several twisted pieces on the gravel driveway.

"They were not even good explosives," Le Feu said. "There's still some of the truck left."

"Though none of the driver," Sorrow said.

"At least he gave us a distraction," Le Feu said. "If we can get around the men out here, we can follow their path up to the house."

"Go in through the front?" Fury asked. "That's fucking mad!"

"It might buy us some time to get a couple of us in the back," Fear said.

Joy frowned, drawing deep shadows across her face that seemed to age her twenty years. "They'd be expecting someone to try coming in the –"

She raised a hand for silence then laid it on the End's shoulder. He turned his head so that she could see one great, bulging eye and nodded. Leaves crunched maybe fifty feet away, and Joy crept toward the sound, stooped low to the forest floor. The first man emerged from the trees in a crouch. He was small and dark-haired, carrying an M1 probably dropped by the British.

Pain scanned the upper windows of the house through his binoculars until he saw the glimmer of a rifle barrel in a third-storey window.

"Boss," he said in a whisper like a breath. He pointed.

"They've got another two waiting beside each first-floor window," she said.

She threw out both hands to stop the Cobras.

Another man followed the first, this one tall and slouching with an olive drab rucksack on his back. The next man was shorter, thick with muscle and carrying another pack. A bronze-skinned blond woman followed so close to him that their bare arms touched as they edged along the treeline.

The damage to the house from two Allied air raids was apparent from this angle in the house's crumbling gables and a tarp-covered section at the southwest corner. The great cement bunker now in view was dappled light and dark where it had been patched.

The blond woman drew a pair of wire cutters from the muscular man's pack and stooped at the base of the fence. She lowered her gaunt face until it looked as though a snip with the wire cutters might take her nose. Her shoulder blades showed through her threadbare cotton shirt, and the skin on her arms dangled in fleshy pockets as though she had once been rather large but had not eaten a good meal in several years. Wires snapped around her hands, opening a three-foot hole for her comrades.

"La Vache," Le Feu whispered. "La Joie, what will we do?"

Joy shook her head.

"We need to help La Vache," Le Feu said.

"No."

"We can still warn them!" Le Feu stepped forward but Pain caught her by both shoulders.

"Le Feu," he said, "we're going to let them be our cover."

The first shot hit a tree, but the next barrage came so fast that the Resistance fighters hardly had time to register that first shot. The muscular man dragged La Vache to the ground, and the pair followed the first man through the hole.

"We'll run in a moment," Joy said to the Cobras and Le Feu. "Follow me."

Pain grinned at Le Feu who scowled back. "She means we need to be careful not to get hit by stray bullets."

Before he had finished, Joy was sprinting through the trees, still out of sight from the chateau. The Cobras broke the cover of the forest on the other side of the bunker, Fear in the lead crawling through the overgrown grass. It was not nearly as high as the field near Longues-sur-Mer, and Fear's black hair looked, from a distance, like a small dog bounding across the lawn. It stopped at the fence for a moment and then disappeared.

Joy pushed her body forward, her knees stiffening from fatigue every time she dragged one through the grass. The noon sun burnt a wide circle on her scalp. The bunker imposed on the horizon as a growing cement crescent but still seemed miles away. Joy fell behind the rest of her unit, and Le Feu slowed beside her, padding through the grass almost as quietly as one of the Cobras.

"La Joie," she whispered. "What is wrong?"

"Nothing." Even her voice was strained. Dirt-browned sweat caught in her eyebrows. Her shoulder blades felt like they were stabbing through her skin.

"I know…," Le Feu began. Her words trailed into the last of the gunfire. "Are they all dead?" she said after the guns had remained silent for a full minute.

"Likely," Joy said. "It was a stupid plan. If that's the best plan an SOE man could muster, he should have been tossed in the Navy."

"What makes you think La Vache needed one of your" – Joy did not know the French word Le Feu used next and wondered if, in fact, she had not simply made it up in her anger – "to tell her what to do?"

"Quiet," Joy hissed. A head of dark hair bounced toward them as if it were debris tossed on a grassy ocean. Joy felt for her knife and lowered her head until her chin touched the soil. Fear's face flashed between blades of grass.

"Boss," he whispered, "the rest made it to the bunker, but they're still outside. We hear voices in there."

Joy tried to move faster, but her body was at its limit. "Good. Keep them waiting. I'll be… along."

"Are you sure you don't –"

Her look silenced him, and he turned with a quick nod toward the bunker. Le Feu stayed at Joy's side like a shadow, her hand occasionally reaching for the same patch of earth as Joy's and brushing her arm in haste to find a new path. Slowly, she inched ahead of Joy until she stopped suddenly. Joy started to go around her, but Le Feu grasped her shoulders.

"Don't!" Le Feu said, and Joy noticed the round indent in the dirt where her hand would have landed next.

"See that?" Le Feu pointed to it. "That's a mine."

"I know what it is."

Le Feu lowered her eyes and continued up the hill. Near the top, as the gray shape of the bunker had begun to gain texture, she said, "La Joie, why have you let me live?"

Joy gave no answer though answers formed in her mind. The one she would give if Le Feu asked again, the answer Joy had almost convinced herself was the truth, was that Joy simply wanted to know more about Le Feu's inventions, perhaps to take them back to the Philosophers. That small part of her mind she hadn't yet been able to convince knew that the truth was not so pragmatic, not even logical - fear. She had wanted to kill Le Feu and knew, logically, that Le Feu was a liability. The woman had admitted to selling secrets to the Nazis, had just attacked her unborn child, but Joy had merely wounded Le Feu. Every other man and woman Joy had killed, however guilty or innocent, she had only known a few minutes, maybe a few hours. Le Feu was… perhaps not a friend… but an acquaintance from childhood. Joy had not liked Le Feu after spending that first day with her, was not even certain she liked Le Feu now, but she_ knew_ her, and that had weakened Joy's hand.

But Le Feu did not ask a second time. She waited at Fury's side for Joy to crawl the last ten feet.

The conversation inside the bunker was indistinct at first, but as Joy drew closer, she heard a man's low voice say in German, "I thought you said there were ten rockets here."  
Another voice, higher and younger, replied, "There were."

"I count only nine."

"We sent one out with Colonel Lange."

"Where did you get that order?"

"The door is right there," Pain said, pointing to a wide cement slope carved into the ground. "It's open."

"… And he got it straight from Rommel," said the younger voice.

Joy said, with a smile in her voice, "Fury, Sorrow, Fear. You'll come with me inside. We'll take out these guys and see if we can destroy the rockets. Le Feu, you'll see if there's some way to bring the whole bunker down."

"C'est imposs –" Le Feu muttered.

"And it may be, but at least take a look. Pain, accompany her. The End, guard the entrance. Right, then."

Joy crept across the small strip of gravel between the edge of the grass and the side of the bunker. Anticipation washed the pain from her body like aspirin. A streak of red like a fireball flew up and over the bunker – the End's parrot.

The entrance to the bunker gaped like a mine shaft. Joy saw immediately why they had been able to hear men talking inside; the heavy iron doors at the bottom of the slope stood open. With the sun high and bright above, the room beyond the doors was a dark hole, but the men sounded as though they were not far inside. As Joy descended the long ramp, the walls on either side rose around her. She was leading her army into a canyon, only one way out. The End's gleaming head was still visible above the left wall, but a few steps later, it disappeared. Joy looked back at the three Cobras behind her. Fury had finally found occasion to carry his flamethrower, and he cradled the gun lovingly in both hands. Sorrow glanced nervously up at the top of each wall and then down into the doorway. Fear walked beside Sorrow, looking no less anxious until he noticed Joy's eyes on him and gave an unctuous little wave.

Beyond the door, a dim light had appeared, vaguely green and electric; it flickered intermittently. Having resolved their conflict over the missing rocket, the two men inside were telling each other stories about items they had once lost and found in increasingly embarrassing ways.

The first room was a hallway into which Joy motioned Fury first with the idea that it would be better to have a wall of fire in front than behind. White neon tubes threw soft light on the moss-covered ceiling. The cement walls from outside extended down the hallway to a second set of open doors. Pools of light from halogen lamps far out of sight covered the floor of the cavernous room beyond. The voices were unnaturally loud inside. When the older man laughed, Joy winced at each resounding boom.

Fear had jumped at the first peal of laughter and was glad to be at the back of the group where no one saw his reaction. Even magnified by the dome shape of the adjacent room, a voice should not have been that loud, especially with nine rockets breaking up the sound. He thought he heard the quiet crack of a gunshot over the voice of the younger man reciting a joke. Through the door behind him, Fear saw only the long, gray ramp and a band of sky above it. At the next pause in the noise, it was quiet.

Fury and Joy stopped just before the door and peered around the frame. They caught each other's eyes and looked back at Fear and Sorrow. Joy's smile had dropped into a grimace, and Fury looked nothing short of murderous. Joy leaned through the doorway again and this time seemed to decide it was safe to enter. Fury tried to grab her arm, but she was through the door before he could even scrape his fingers across her shirt.

The room was vast, round, and almost empty. The voices were thunderous in the cement dome, echoing from the walls, ceiling, floor. Instead of rockets, the room was full of shelves forming a sort of asterisk with an open center. A few lay on their sides, their contents scattered across the cement. The Cobras, in pairs, slinked along the walls, searching the room for hidden doors and the source of the voices. Fury knelt beside one fallen cabinet and held a metal cylinder up to Fear.

"It's a goddamned land mine," he shouted over the German's roaring philosophical musing on the nature of lost things.

"Shh!" Fury hissed.

"Not like they can hear me over this racket… if there's anyone even in here."

The German's voice, in the middle of its monologue, suddenly dropped in pitch to a low monotone and slowed until its final words died in an unintelligible groan. The buzz of the halogen lamps continued in the quiet.

Joy's voice called from across the room, "Fear, Fury, run!"

She and Sorrow had almost reached the door, and Fear and Fury were halfway there when they heard a new voice.

"Another of my inventions."

It was deep, English, jovial, and undeniably familiar.

"I don't go with the flowery German names Le Feu loves so much," said Mark Astrus, sweeping through the doorway in a black cape that touched the floor. "I call it the 'sound box'. Simple name but quite a piece of work. There's a smaller version too, for operatives. Not as loud, of course, and it can't play as long, but…"

He shrugged as if to say, "what have you". When he brought his hands back down, one now held a gun.

"My gun's just for show," he said, pointing it at Fear while keeping his eyes on Joy. "All of them are, actually. You see, it would be rather a bad idea to shoot in here. The room has been filling with hydrogen gas for several hours. It's probably enough to send us all up in flames by now."

He placed his gun carefully on the floor and raised his arms in surrender.

"Run him the fuck through, Fear," Fury said, and Fear raised his crossbow.

"I wouldn't try it, dear boy." Astrus chuckled good-naturedly. "Just one little spark – the bolt hitting the wall behind me when I dodge the first shot, for example – would kill us almost as quick as your friend's flamethrower."

"He's a damn liar," Fury snarled.

Astrus turned his eyes to Fury, raised his eyebrows, and turned back to Fear. "Do you wish to test your friend's theory, Fear?"

Joy, who had remained silent with her gun aimed at Astrus since he had entered, said, "What is your point, Astrus? You get us here and take pains to see that none of us can use our weapons. Tell me what you want."

"I believe there are weapons you've forgotten, m'girl." Astrus beamed at her.

"I'm not fighting you," she said, but the words had barely left her mouth before Astrus had sprung toward her, leg ready with a kick that missed as she stepped closer to the wall. Her elbow aimed for his stomach but landed in his side. He grasped her arm and spun her away from him. One of her boots connected with his shin, but she knew when his grip did not flinch that she had not put enough force behind it. She jabbed her other arm backward but hit nothing. His upper arm clamped over it as he drew a knife to her throat.

"Joy," he said with the same conversational air, "what did I say before about taking prisoners?"

"You're wanting to teach me a lesson?" Joy panted though she was not sure if it was from fatigue or a lack of oxygen in the room. "In the middle of a Nazi stronghold?"

At these words, Fear saw Sorrow shiver and look away.

"You did not answer my question, dear Joy." Astrus swept the knife through her hair, and a shock fell onto her shoulder.

"Where are the Pain and the End?" Joy asked with recalcitrant calm.

"They are merely sleeping, Joy. You see, one of them shot me with a dart that contained the most remarkable sort of tranquilizer. Through analysis of the chemical compounds and the mechanism for firing such a dart, my technicians were able to recreate it. Please, thank him for me when he wakes up. Only problem was it took three to bring the Pain down. I do hope it wasn't too much."

"And Le Feu?" Joy could feel the suicide pill in her breast pocket, pressing against her skin with each increasingly difficult breath. If she could somehow tell the other Cobras to take theirs… or simply to shoot Astrus without giving him enough warning to escape…

"Ah, now she gets to the heart of her folly. Le Feu, please, my good sirs!"

Two hard-faced men in a mix of German and Red Army uniform dragged Le Feu between them. Her clothing was torn in long gashes edged in blood, and her hair fell over her face. She tossed her head defiantly, and Joy saw the red beginning of a bruise around her right eye.

"You fucking…," Fury said, but Astrus grinned.

"Oh, no. She did that to herself. Skidded across the gravel with a gun in her hand. Lucky she had her finger off the trigger or she'd be down half a face where she's got that shiner."

"It is not luck!" Le Feu shrieked. "I am not stuipid!"

"My, my, of course not! And neither is, ah, _La Joie_. You have only both made mistakes. Now, Joy, will you please answer my question?"

"You said a prisoner was a liability," Joy said.

"Indeed I did. And yet…" Astrus lifted his arm enough to allow Joy to reach for her pocket. "Please, dear Joy. Think of the mission before you go blowing yourself up."

Joy pinched the capsule between her fingers and drew it slowly upward. Astrus did not try to stop her.

"You can breathe easier – quite literally – knowing that I want to see this mission succeed as much as you. Indeed, the hydrogen should be dissipating. Sorry for the threats, but we needed to talk. And I needed to take this prisoner off your hands."

"No!" Le Feu said. "Do you know who this man is?"

"And do they know who _you_ are?" Astrus said, letting go of Joy's other arm.

"I do." Joy's forearm hit his chest with a thud, sending him stumbling toward his soldiers. Joy felt herself falling with him – he had hooked his foot behind her knee. He recovered instantly and caught her in a grasp like a crushing hug.

"Joy, Joy, Joy. Don't confuse knowing one secret of a person's past with knowing who she is." Astrus stepped away from Joy and threw his cape back.

"Goddamn S.S. uniform," Fury said. "The whole fucking time?"

"Oho! This is just to get me around France. It was convincing enough for Le Feu. She was eager to tell me that a whole troop of spies was right here in this bunker."

"Liar!" Le Feu cried.

Fear raised his crossbow again.

"Do it, Fear," Joy said. "Then Sorrow and I will take the rest."

"What?" Sorrow said.

"But he said…" Fear furrowed his eyebrows.

"Astrus was bluffing," Joy said.

"I wouldn't, Fear," Astrus said.

A rare unreadable expression came over Fear's face, something like a masochist anticipating that first lash of pain. At the twang of his crossbow, light filled the doorway; Joy was torn from Astrus's arms and thrown into Sorrow.

"A bluff?" Fear shouted from somewhere inside a cloud of dark smoke.

"This is not a fucking hydrogen explosion!" Fury said.

"You okay, Misha?" Joy asked, rolling off of Sorrow.

"A rib or two only," he said.

"Oh, hell," Fury muttered. "Oh, holy fucking mother of all the goddamned bastards. The fucking dirty…" He ended in a grunt that sounded suspiciously like a dry sob.

The smoke had cleared, but the lamps overhead were out. The only light was a dusky beam near the doorway. Three bodies lay curled on the floor, Fury crouched among them.

"How did he…," Fury growled. "How the hell did he…?"

He lifted Le Feu's head in his arms, and Joy saw, unmistakably, a crossbow bolt protruding from her throat.

"Fucking dirty magic trick," Fury said.

"It wasn't a magic trick," Fear said.

Joy coughed, warning him to stop, but Fear continued. "I did it."

Le Feu's head hit the ground with a crunch as Fury flew to his feet. "YOU SON OF A MOTHERFUCKING WHORE! MAY YOUR WHOLE FAMILY AND ANY DOG-FUCKING CHILDREN YOU HAVE ROT IN HELL!"

He fumbled for his flame thrower just long enough for Joy to wrap her arms around his elbows. Fury tried to twist free. "LET ME GO, DEMON-BITCH GUN-FUCKER! I HOPE YOUR HELL-CHILD GETS FUCKED IN THE ASS BY THE D–"

Fury collapsed in her arms.

"Thank you, Sorrow," she said, "and thank God you picked the one with the tranq darts."


	46. Hardly a Soldier

Another AN: For those of you who've followed this story from the beginning, I offer a sincere apology. It was never my intention to orphan it, and I won't be doing so. As often happens with authors of long fics, I got caught up in life and could only write in bursts. I do intend to finish The Joy of Battle, and soon! It's been such an important part of the past few years. Don't expect another long fic from me, however. This one was nagging to be written, but after this I will be devoting most of my writing to something publishable. I will, however, continue posting occasional short stories. I'm not done with the Cobra Unit. I'm certain there will be more short stories here and there for years to come.

Thank you again, so very much, for reading The Joy of Battle and bearing with me while I get each chapter written.

* * *

Chapter 46: Hardly a Soldier

* * *

"Take care of those two, Fear," Joy said, hoisting Fury onto her back with a protracted groan. "And Sorrow –"

"No." He stared with the same penetrating eyes he had inflicted on Jonathan Thomas. "I will not tell you what they say if you kill them." Sorrow's mouth fixed itself into a line.

Joy matched his glare. "You will do whatever I order you to do."

"If you kill them, I will not."

Anger, hot as the moment she had broken Le Feu's hand, shortened Joy's breath, weakened her shoulders. She buckled for a moment under Fury's weight.

"What do I do, Boss?" Fear asked.

"You follow my orders, not Sorrow's. I gave you an order.

"Don't," Sorrow said hoarsely.

He could have thrown himself over their bodies as Fury had done to save Le Feu. He could have seized the crossbow and tackled Fear to the floor like he had stopped David Oh's knife. Sorrow did neither.

He spread his pale fingers and stretched out his hand so that the tips just rested on Fear's exposed wrist.

"What are you –" Fear's question broke in an unrestrained, infantile scream. His skin seemed to retreat into his eye sockets, leaving his eyes bulging, naked and vacant. Under Fear's scream, so quiet Joy wouldn't have noticed had she not seen Sorrow's lips moving, Sorrow whispered in a harsh Eastern European language Joy did not recognize. His fingers dug white ditches into Fear's wrist.

This was the power that had provoked the Nazi scientists into keeping Sorrow in a dark cell and Joy into taking him to Stalingrad. Sorrow's power, precariously as he controlled it, had won them Stalingrad but caught the eye of the Philosophers. On a bitter night in a tunnel under the city, Joy had defied them because, though she had only seen him unsteadily plotting the whereabouts of German units, she sensed a stronger power suppressed by Sorrow's fear. Whatever it was, she didn't want the Philosophers to use it. Joy glimpsed it again while training him – knowledge he should never have had about her mother. She had shared his fear that day, and he became like a weapon to her – restrained at her side until required. A responsibility and then, though the word never manifested in her brain, her lover… but hardly a soldier. How could she expect him to respond like one?

* * *

Fear's head had dropped back on Sorrow's shoulder, and the crossbow fell from his slack hand. Joy opened her mouth to shout at Sorrow, but cold fear had parched her throat.

A quiet cat scratch of a voice shouted in Russian from the hallway, and Sorrow turned, dragging Fear's semi-conscious body in a half-circle across the dusty floor. The End's pitted face appeared in the doorway wearing an expression of such fury he could hardly be mistaken for the same man.

For a moment, the End seemed to shimmer in the vision Sorrow and Fear shared, a ghost between great gnarled trees. Then that world whipped away like a blindfold, and Sorrow stood once again in a cement bunker. What he had just done, Sorrow wasn't entirely certain, only that there had been trees and blood and spiders and so many screams. And Fear now dangled like a marionette in his arms. Like a ghost, his mind whispered that he had a mission here, something foggy… a blur like losing his glasses.

"Don't you go pretending to faint on me!" the End shouted. "That'd make four of you out, and I'm not opposed to dragging you and Fear by one ankle apiece."

All kindness had left his voice; he would have dragged Sorrow across France – and gladly.

Joy's voice came calmly from behind Sorrow. "There are at least two rockets preparing to launch somewhere in France, we're in a bunker with only one entrance in the middle of a mine field, and I'm carrying a madman over my shoulder who could awaken at any moment."

"Actually," said the End, "if they used the correct formula, you have about an hour."

Joy pursed her lips and continued, "I've lost one today, and if you can't act like a soldier, Sorrow, it will be two."

Astrus had warned him to watch her. The West had made its move for Joy in the form of David Oh, prepared to wound her if that might keep her in England. Now the Soviet Philosophers had lured her to the chateau, not without some cooperation on the Sorrow's part. Astrus had disappeared, but surely he planned to stop them from leaving the chateau. East or West? The Soviets or the Americans? Mark Astrus or David Oh? Either choice meant sending Joy to a hospital, off the battlefield, away from the Cobras. Away from him.

"Leave them here," she said with the slightest sigh. "Let's go."

And as she strained under Fury's weight, staggering to the hallway, Sorrow silently swore his loyalty to her.

* * *

In hindsight, waking up on a parquet floor with bands of sunset falling across her body and a growling hunger, Joy would have sent Sorrow out of the bunker first. She would have stood guard outside herself. She would have slept more than four hours in three days. As she pawed half-heartedly for the L-tablet, Joy tried to remember whether she had suspected Mark Astrus during that first mission, now almost a year ago. Certainly not when he offered to carry her luggage at the Thatched House or brought her breakfast in Marquise. In Berlin, though, every night he swept that black cape around her and asked what lies the Fear could detect and how quickly the End's tranquilizer worked, she silently questioned why he needed to know. Even then, she spoke vaguely about the Sorrow. Astrus had risked her life, sending her to assassinate von Neumann; he had controlled her unit. But he had never tried to kill her.

The pill was still there, and something else crinkled as she tried to pinch it between her fingers. She pulled the slip of paper out with the pill. In a broad cursive, someone, presumably Astrus, had written, "Cures all ills," and a date: "June 4, 1944."

Joy sprang to the window – steel between panes of bullet-resistant glass, she noticed. The sunlight glowed bitter orange from the west. If the note's date was true, she had slept over 24 hours. She raised her left arm to the window and felt a sharp pain near her elbow – a swollen gouge made by a large, sloppy syringe. They had kept her sleeping, and no doubt someone below her had heard her moving across the wooden floor. She dropped to her knees and listened, but the only voices were so muffled they could easily have been the lowing of cattle. The door looked thin. She kicked at the lock and heard a satisfying shout from the hallway, then a muttered answer and silence. She tried again and heard no reaction. She kicked until the exertion made her dizzy – much sooner than it would have even two days ago – and she stretched out on the cool wood to watch the sky darken.

The one and final option lay in the form of a pill several feet away.

"Cures all ills," the note said, and Joy felt ill as she ever had. The walls pushed further and further away as if she were shrinking. She grasped the L-tablet but did not bring it to her mouth. It was certainly not fear that stopped her. Certainly. Astrus certainly wanted her to live. Certainly. The sun breathed its last for the day somewhere behind a fence of pine trees. June fourth. Maybe third. Maybe fifth. In another room, tucked in some far corner of the house, Sorrow had probably killed himself already, and here Joy lay, nauseous breaths heaving in her chest, the L-tablet in her hand. Her old body would have broken the lock. Her old body was not a coward.

* * *

Fury tore through a tangle of limbs – not severed but growing off of one another – the creations of a mad scientist god. The warm hand he was holding slipped through his fingers, and he reached back. The hand he grasped was large, cold, and hairy-knuckled, stiffly melded onto a knee at the shoulder.

"Le Feu!" he shouted, and the reply drowned in the constant "oompa-oompa" which crashed around him.

Fury spun, surveying a field bathed in soft red light and filled with thigh-high tumbleweeds of human limbs. A leg near him wore black pumps. The gams on that doll. A tumbleweed rattled toward him, unfolded, and was the Fear, naked, smeared with oil and blood.

"Fury!" said Le Feu's voice, and he turned.

The bolt flew with the sound of a trombone blast, and Le Feu screamed like a trumpet as Fury awoke. There was the oompa-oompa blaring from a boxy, metal radio across the room, and Fury's grogginess succeeded better than chains at keeping him in the wingback chair.

"Fuck you," Fury growled at the radio.

His head throbbed, and his eyes threatened to clamp themselves shut again. He could reason that he'd been drugged, but further thinking hurt. Every electric lamp in the room glowed a searing orange even when Fury did close his eyes again. He could not sleep.

Fury struggled to lift his head and peer around the wing of the chair. A long, olive-cloaked body lay crumpled near the door, sleeves rolled up to show hairy arms. Fury threw himself out of the chair with the strength of rage and delirium. His legs surged with electricity but would not move, so he dragged himself across the room by his hands. He jerked back the head of the crumpled figure. A steeply-pitched nose led down to wide lips. The Fear was alive but unconscious. Fury grasped Fear tightly by the front of his hair and shook him. Then he dropped him, Fear's head bouncing slightly on the wooden floor. Fear twitched and lay still.

"How does that feel, you fucking murderer?" Fury muttered.

He rained weak blows on Fear's shoulder and chest. He struggled to stand but only made it to one knee before collapsing. Lying so close to Fear that he could smell the grating, even breaths that escaped his lips, the Fury brought that one knee up and planted it hard in Fear's stomach.

* * *

Cold. The End's circadian rhythm told him it was evening, but the bitter darkness gave no indication he was right. Even after his eyes grew accustomed, the End could see only the faintest green glow around a slimy metal door.

Bring some new weapon into the world, and your enemies will use it themselves eventually. So the Russians had his tranquilizer formula. He still balked a little each time he thought of them that way – as if he were not himself a native of Agapovka. He had killed at least a hundred men, some of them friends, in the civil war for the same Revolution Astrus claimed to represent. Astrus knew nothing of Russian suffering. He had never tilled the rocky earth on the side of Chersky. His father had never disappeared in the night only to return in the form of three letters from Siberia. An Englishman was worse than a Georgian.

The End arched his back with a creak of aging bones. The microbomb rubbed his sternum.

The microbomb! The End patted his pockets and, finding the tablet gone, blew out all his breath. He held it, then pulled back his head to slam into the wall. He did not fear death, but he feared God. That body, frail as it was from however long in a dark basement, was not his to destroy – and certainly not the Joy's, damn her!

"A war a generation," the old imperial generals used to say. The End had lived four generations and fought as many wars. This wasn't a real war, at least the way the Cobra Unit fought it. In a real war, you knew your enemy was the man in the other uniform. There wasn't some amorphous target and four days crawling through what was left of France. An aging sniper like the End could perch on some rock or even high in a bombed-out window and separate goats from the flock with each bullet.

He dragged himself across the uneven floor, knees landing in frigid puddles two inches deep.

* * *

Black, black, and horribly black. Pain saw nothing else. He felt a sensation that he was being restrained but no other indication of where he was. Whatever lay beneath his back compressed as he pushed against it. No light at all, though.

"Hello?" Pain shouted. No echo returned.

Complete darkness. Complete silence. He curled his fingers into his palms and dug hard. A little pressure through all that scarred flesh. He was alive.

Alive but nowhere. Up or down? He felt like Alice, falling forever. He laughed. No echo. The darkness sucked the words from his mouth. The darkness crushed and gnawed and spun the world.

* * *

A cup of weak tea on the side table had gone cold hours ago. The Sorrow paced, straining at every small sound as if hearing Joy's voice spilling in the window on the cooling night would give him the strength to climb to her. Her was no soldier. If he were, he'd have slipped out that window and scaled the stone façade already. No, if he were a soldier, he'd have jumped out the window. Only three stories. Little chance of dying. Every chance of breaking most of his bones. So he paced, and he listened to the dead and for the living.

* * *

Joy turned the L-tablet over again, fingering the ends. So very, very small a thing, and she'd be dead before she got to the "amen". She laid it between her lips and rolled it to one corner of her mouth, then the other.

She heard a thud and a creaking on the roof above her. Ten seconds later, a body dropped past the window. A face peered in, framed by the bars, with a scar blazing down one cheek.


End file.
